Word: ant
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...book. The Ant World (Penguin Books; 50?), British Entomologist Derek Wragge Morley keeps insisting that ants are ants, and must not be confused with humans. But readers who follow him on his rounds through the cities of the ants will find many reminders of human behavior...
Another custom is economic as well as social. The workers have two stomachs. One contains food for their personal use; the other holds community food. When two ants meet, they are apt to press their mouths together for a transfer of food. This act is so common that if a few yellow ants are fed on red-dyed honey, the entire colony soon turns red. Eventually, every ant in the community gets fed, although many of them have had nothing to do with foraging for food...
Invaders & Guests. Ants have scent-glands on their backs, and in the course of their constant caressing, all the individuals in a colony acquire the same odor. Since ants depend chiefly on smell, rather than on sight or hearing, the colony odor is equivalent to the recognition signs that humans use to identify members of their social groups. If an ant that does not smell just right is introduced into a colony, it is usually treated roughly...
Proofs of ant citizenship can be falsified rather easily, and many intruders take advantage of this fact. A newly fertilized Jet Black Ant queen sometimes hangs around the door of a foreign colony until she takes on some of its characteristic odor. After a time she marches in boldly. The defenders, thinking she is one of them, do not stop her. When she finds the resident queen, she climbs on top of the incumbent and bites off her head. Then she starts laying eggs. Her young can eventually become so numerous that they dominate the colony...
...rest of the book is a close-up of a paranoiac in a jungle clearing, screaming revenge on her whole life, while the tropics close in like an ant horde and nibble her to death with minor misfortunes. Her children struggle to break free of the inner jungle of Ma's spirit, only to find themselves in the outer jungle of a degenerate colonial society...