I THOUGHT BACK to the corn and tomatoes summoning wasps. They were in essence enlisting collaborators. Or, seen in a slightly different way, they were using the wasps as tools. The line between collaboration and coercion is sometimes blurry. The wasps certainly benefited from the relationship too. But either way, it was the plant that proposed the arrangement in the first place. From the plant’s perspective, it had found the right tool for the job. I thought about how an ability to use tools is a classic test of animal intelligence.
