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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea originated I will not pretend to
conjecture. But as ants, which are not slave-makers, will, as I have seen,
carry off pupae of other species, if scattered near their nests, it is
possible that pupae originally stored as food might become developed; and
the ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow their proper
instincts, and do what work they could. If their presence proved useful to
the species which had seized them--if it were more advantageous to this
species to capture workers than to procreate them--the habit of collecting
pupae originally for food might by natural selection be strengthened and
rendered permanent for the very different purpose of raising slaves. When
the instinct was once acquired, if carried out to a much less extent even
On the Origin of Species |
