for our final today, please identify the mouthparts, the abdominal organs, and for extra credit, locate the nerve cord and count the ganglia. you may begin.
just a bug, eh ? we humans like to think we are nature's finest achievement. i'm afraid it isn't true. this arkellian sand beetle is superior in many ways. it has fewer moving parts, can reproduce itself in vast numbers, and unboud by concerns of ego and mortality, makes the perfect selfless member of society.
our galaxy is teaming with insect life. we have identified over two billion species so far. human, life, it would seem, is the anomaly.
true, we know of no insect society that has produced a shakespeare, an einstein or a cherynkov, but before you let that go to your head, take the example of the arachnids, a highly organized, highly evolved insect society.
they are relatively stupid by human standards. workers have an iq of 12, warriors around 35 , and yet the arachnids have colonized planets. over a million years of evolution, nature has provided the arachnids with the biological means to hurl their spore into space.