These insect societies have been astoundingly successful. sa far as
concerns survival power. They seem to have a past extending over
tens of thousands of years, perhaps of millions of years.
It
is the
greatest of mistakes to believe that it has required the high·grade
intelligence of mankind to construct an elaborate social organization.
A particular instance of this error is the prevalent assumption that
any social routine whose purposes are not obvious t0 our analysis is
thereby to be condemned as foolish. We cao observe insects per
forming elaborate routine actions whose purposes they cannat possibly understand, which yet are essential either for their own
individual survival or for race-survival.

Whitehead