‘99.99 per cent of the colony will never reproduce,’ Faulkes told me. Unlike meerkats, subordinates never flout the no-breeding rule with sneaky copulations. They can’t. The queen has put paid to any notion of parenthood by suppressing their sexual development. Both male and female subordinates remain trapped in a pre-pubescent state. They don’t even develop adult genitalia. So subordinate sex is ruled out in this eusocial system. As a result, Faulkes tells me, the non-breeding castes are impossible to tell apart sexually. They scuttle about the colony like unisex smoothies doing the queen’s
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