Volume 27, Number 21 & 22 · January 22, 1981
The Ghost of Protagoras
By Stephen Jay Gould
The Evolution of Culture in Animals
by John Tyler Bonner
Princeton University Press, 216 pp., $14.50
Man, the Promising Primate
by Peter J. Wilson
Yale University Press, 185 pp., $12.95
The female mason wasp, Monobia quadridens, excavates a broad chamber by digging a long tube into the pith of trees and stems. She deposits a series of eggs in the tube, starting at the bottom and separating each egg from the next by a curved mud partition. The partitions are shaped with their rough and convex side toward daylight and their smooth and concave side toward the cul de sac at the blind end of the chamber. The larvae feed and pupate within their chambers, which the mother has provisioned with food. When the young adults emerge, they crawl toward freedom by chewing through the rough, convex sides of the partitions. If the partitions are experimentally reversed, so that the rough and convex sides now point toward the cul de sac, the emerging adults cut their way into the stem, pile up at the blind end of the tube, and eventually die. Apparently, the mason wasp has evolved a rigidly programmed rule of behavior: cut through the rough and convex side of the partition. In nature, obedience to this rule always leads to daylight. If a human experimenter intervenes to reverse the partitions, the wasp cannot accommodate and digs to its own death, steadfastly obeying its unbreakable rule.
Review, 3508 words
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