Locusts Change Memory By Joining The Swarm

Dr. Michael LaitmanIn the News (from the University of Leicester): “Research from Universities of Leicester, Sussex and Cambridge into desert locusts discovers how your environment shapes your thinking. …

“Desert locusts are notorious for their devastating swarms. However, they do not always live in swarms — they switch between a lone living ‘solitary phase’ and a swarming ‘gregarious’ phase. The two phases differ profoundly in looks, behaviour and in their life style. …

“Solitary locusts rely on camouflage to evade predators, and they avoid eating toxic plants; but gregarious locusts eat these plants to ‘impregnate’ themselves with toxins to deter predators. The transformation to gregarious behaviour, which happens when solitary locusts are forced together into a crowd, is complete within a few hours. …

“As Dr. Ott explains: “Desert locusts aggregate into swarms when they run out of food — the crowding is driven by hunger and competition for the last few plants in the desert. They are pretty desperate when they transform into the gregarious phase, so they will give the toxic plants another try. And because they can no longer form aversive memories, any food is now rewarding and they form the new ‘correct’ appetitive memory with the odour. This is how they re-train themselves to eat the toxic plants.’”

My Comment: These examples of nature are illustrative because they clearly show that a unification of individuals into a community changes everyone’s nature, giving everyone new qualities, which would not be manifested in one alone. That is, an individual, as one, and unity of individuals into a whole one have different levels of development and different natures. Unity acquires a higher order, moreover, so different that food and environments previously poisonous for an individual become healthy…
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