The rest of the several million termites in the colony, other than the king, are rendered sterile and kept in their lowly castes by ingesting pheromones secreted by the royal anus, all of which makes the British monarchy suddenly seem quite reasonable. Eusociality is an alien way of life that challenges philosophical ideas of the individual and has provided inspiration for countless sci-fi dystopias. Aldous Huxley reportedly based the dictatorship in Brave New World on humans as social insects, with five castes. The fact this sci-fi society has evolved in invertebrates – such distant relatives
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