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    Cover of The Soul of the White Ant

    The Soul of the White Ant

    Eugène Marais · 2015

    Other
    Open LibraryAmazon
    Stats for nerds
    2recommend
    3mentions
    3people
    2009–2020years
    67% recommend33% neutral

    Mentions per year

    2009201120132015201720192020

    What Hacker News says

    1. pure-awesomeJan 2020
      This point is made in the book "The Soul of the White Ant" by Eugène Marais, and is perhaps the primary thesis of the book.

      It is a fascinating book, and I can recommend reading it, though having been published in 1925, it is possible some of the information is out-of-date.

      https://www.amazon.com/Soul-White-Ant-Complete-Unabridged/dp...

      "White Ant" actually refers to termites, though the same principles apply. The book was originally published in Afrikaans. According to Wikipedia:

      > [The book] was plagiarised by Nobel laureate Maurice Maeterlinck, who published La Vie des Termites (translated into English as The Life of Termites or The Life of White Ants), an entomological book,[3] in what has been called "a classic example of academic plagiarism" by University of London's professor of biology, David Bignell.[4]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Marais#Theft_of_hi...

      Following reference [4] led to this page which I unfortunately don't have the time to read in its entirety right now, but from a skim seems to have some interesting further information on termites:

      https://web.archive.org/web/20070915005006/http://www.biolog...

      thread
    2. katzFeb 2009
      Ants and termites are awesome.

      The organism analogy of an insect society is actually due to Eugene Marais (who studied termites). An interesting book of termites is Soul of the White Ant which you can find here: http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030213marais/Th... It is pretty readable for a book that is >75 years old.

      Termites can have little fungal farms. They also have tunnels stretching down to the water table so that it can get water even in dry times.

      thread
    3. antsoulJan 2020
      Eugène N. Marais - The Soul of the White Ant (1937) http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/Marais1/whiteantToC...
      thread

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