[hammock]

> The sheer number of non-ant species that have evolved to look and behave exactly like ants, from being drug-pushers to parasitoids, to meme-ready social influencers says a lot about how long they've been around and how important they are to how natural systems work.

Fascinating to me, and thank you for calling it out. Ants aren't the only "form" that this happens to in the animal kingdom either.

Homo sapiens used to live alongside other similar species like neanderthals etc, and eventually we crowded them all out. Often we tell ourselves it's because we were superior to them. Many have wondered what society would be like if we still had close species cousins living among us. Certainly our own approach to geopolitics would be quite different to what it is today

[graemep]

> Many have wondered what society would be like if we still had close species cousins living among us. Certainly our own approach to geopolitics would be quite different to what it is today

It would not be great. If you consider the track record human being have of being horrible to those who look very slightly different or have a slightly different culture, how would we treat beings who were far more different?

It would be even worse if they were are mental inferiors. Imagine a world in which scientific racism was proven true rather than debunked. They would be perfect slaves or research subjects.