The Selfish Gene

by Richard Dawkins

Impressed as we may be by the caddis house, we are nevertheless, paradoxically, less impressed than we would be by equivalent achievements in animals closer to ourselves. Just imagine the banner headlines if a marine biologist were to discover a species of dolphin that wove large, intricately meshed fishing nets, twenty dolphin-lengths in diameter! Yet we take a spider web for granted, as a nuisance in the house rather than as one of the wonders of the world. And think of the furore if Jane Goodall returned from Gombe stream with photographs of wild chimpanzees building their own houses, well roofed and insulated, of painstakingly selected stones neatly bonded and mortared! Yet caddis larvae, who do precisely that, command only passing interest. It is sometimes said, as though in defence of this double standard, that spiders and caddises achieve their feats of architecture by ‘instinct’. But so what? In a way this makes them all the more impressive.