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pure-awesome · 2020-01-16 · Original thread
This point is made in the book "The Soul of the White Ant" by Eugène Marais, and is perhaps the primary thesis of the book.

It is a fascinating book, and I can recommend reading it, though having been published in 1925, it is possible some of the information is out-of-date.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-White-Ant-Complete-Unabridged/dp...

"White Ant" actually refers to termites, though the same principles apply. The book was originally published in Afrikaans. According to Wikipedia:

> [The book] was plagiarised by Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck, who published La Vie des Termites (translated into English as The Life of Termites or The Life of White Ants), an entomological book,[3] in what has been called "a classic example of academic plagiarism" by University of London's professor of biology, David Bignell.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Marais#Theft_of_hi...

Following reference [4] led to this page which I unfortunately don't have the time to read in its entirety right now, but from a skim seems to have some interesting further information on termites:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070915005006/http://www.biolog...

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