Why no large hive intelligences? Ants, social wasps, bees, termites dominate vertebrate biomass. On the insect level these are incredibly dominant in the biosphere. Eusociality is a game-changing tech. Yet with a single exception there are no large hive intelligence. That single exception is the naked mole rat—a rare non-dominant species. Why?
Claude suggests:
Genetic predisposition: Hymenopteran insects (ants, bees, wasps) have a haplodiploid genetic system where females share 75% of their genes with sisters but only 50% with their own offspring. This creates a genetic incentive for females to raise sisters rather than their own young, facilitating eusociality. Vertebrates lack this genetic system.
Ecological factors: Small, confined spaces like burrows or nests favor eusocial evolution. Insects can thrive in tiny spaces inaccessible to larger vertebrates.
Cognitive complexity: The greater cognitive abilities of vertebrates may actually work against eusociality, as it enables more complex individual decision-making and flexibility rather than rigid, colony-focused behaviors.
I’m not entirely convinced. The haplodiploid genetic systems isn’t universal for eusocial species. The point of eusociality is exactly that one can build burrows at scale [e.g. like beavers]. The point about cognitive complexity is the best argument imho but I don’t quite see how it would block eusociality.
Eusocial organisms have more specialisation at the individual level rather than non-eusocial organisms (I think). I might expect that I would want a large amount of interchangeable individuals for each specialisation (a low bus factor), rather than more expensive, big, rare entities.
This predicts that complex multicellular organisms would have smaller cells than unicellular organisms or simple multicellular organisms (i.e. those were there isn’t differentiation between the cells)
Small groups of mammals can already cooperate with each other (wolf’s, lions, monkeys etc.). In mammals, I’d guess having a queen gives a bottleneck in how fast there can be off-spring. Also if there are large returns to division of labor in child-rearing, large animals are smart enough that both parents can do this together, while in wasps the males just die (why actually?). So wasps get higher marginal returns when evolving the first steps towards being eusocial. Also smaller animals have more diverse environments and need fewer years to “locked in” eusociality and workers get born without being fertile (eusocial groups where workers are still fertile are really unstable so prone to evolve away from eusociality again when circumstances aren’t in favor anymore). Also fathers can’t be as sure of their children and the other way around leading to less cooperation if new males join in, which termites overcome by having king and queen, ants just have a queen that stores her sperm, while naked mole rats are just fine with incest?
Why no large hive intelligences?
Ants, social wasps, bees, termites dominate vertebrate biomass. On the insect level these are incredibly dominant in the biosphere. Eusociality is a game-changing tech. Yet with a single exception there are no large hive intelligence. That single exception is the naked mole rat—a rare non-dominant species. Why?
Claude suggests:
Genetic predisposition: Hymenopteran insects (ants, bees, wasps) have a haplodiploid genetic system where females share 75% of their genes with sisters but only 50% with their own offspring. This creates a genetic incentive for females to raise sisters rather than their own young, facilitating eusociality. Vertebrates lack this genetic system.
Ecological factors: Small, confined spaces like burrows or nests favor eusocial evolution. Insects can thrive in tiny spaces inaccessible to larger vertebrates.
Cognitive complexity: The greater cognitive abilities of vertebrates may actually work against eusociality, as it enables more complex individual decision-making and flexibility rather than rigid, colony-focused behaviors.
I’m not entirely convinced. The haplodiploid genetic systems isn’t universal for eusocial species. The point of eusociality is exactly that one can build burrows at scale [e.g. like beavers]. The point about cognitive complexity is the best argument imho but I don’t quite see how it would block eusociality.
Eusocial organisms have more specialisation at the individual level rather than non-eusocial organisms (I think). I might expect that I would want a large amount of interchangeable individuals for each specialisation (a low bus factor), rather than more expensive, big, rare entities.
This predicts that complex multicellular organisms would have smaller cells than unicellular organisms or simple multicellular organisms (i.e. those were there isn’t differentiation between the cells)
Small groups of mammals can already cooperate with each other (wolf’s, lions, monkeys etc.). In mammals, I’d guess having a queen gives a bottleneck in how fast there can be off-spring. Also if there are large returns to division of labor in child-rearing, large animals are smart enough that both parents can do this together, while in wasps the males just die (why actually?). So wasps get higher marginal returns when evolving the first steps towards being eusocial. Also smaller animals have more diverse environments and need fewer years to “locked in” eusociality and workers get born without being fertile (eusocial groups where workers are still fertile are really unstable so prone to evolve away from eusociality again when circumstances aren’t in favor anymore). Also fathers can’t be as sure of their children and the other way around leading to less cooperation if new males join in, which termites overcome by having king and queen, ants just have a queen that stores her sperm, while naked mole rats are just fine with incest?