24 SIENNA SOLSTICE too will soon smell of freshly cut grass. The buzz of a honeybee brings to mind their complex social structure. There are numerous rankings and jobs within a hive, the most basic division being into female queen, female workers, and male drones. But even deeper, workers have countless jobs, from raising young bees to doting on the queen to cleaning the hive. All members are geared, or at least all the female workers, towards protecting the queen and the longevity of the hive. This makes sense if you look at their genetic makeup. Unfertilized eggs, only one gamete, develop as males. These drones have two goals: eat and mate. On the other hand, fertilized eggs develop as females. Worker females, sister bees, share far more genetic material with one another than biological human siblings. Sister bees are 75% related, to our 50%, so they are even more inclined to protect one another. Scientists rigorously debate if altruism exists. Like sister honeybees, nearby blades of grass are closely related, so it makes sense that they would try to warn their cousins. If I can’t survive, maybe you can, and you will carry on our common genes. Of course, grass does not have a brain. No blade has ever thought this through. It’s simply that those historic grass blades who warned their cousins, passed on their genes. Bees do have brains, but I highly doubt they run a probability calculation when feeding their queen. This is all merely a statistical game for scientists to play. Many scientists assert that there is no such thing as true altruism, that all acts of care stem from this game of still trying to ensure the longevity of your own genes. Whether bees or grass or humans, it is a selfish act. We must expect an act of care in return. I help you, you help me. But I don’t buy this for a minute. Maybe we are sometimes unconsciously helping blood relatives for this reason, but that can’t be the only reason. And help transcends families, species even. Dolphins have been known to circle and protect human swimmers from nearby sharks. Surely, our genetic relationship to dolphins is distant enough that it’s just out of compassion. I will even settle for it being curiosity. What could the dolphins possibly expect in return? Even among organisms less developed neurologically, care must be innate. Sometimes in science we are inclined to remove loveliness from the world. We can lose the forest for the trees, so to speak, and see only trees trying to ensure their genetic survival. Or only the species diversity makeup of a forest. Or only the chemical structure of a yellowing, fall leaf. Science is lovely though. The unwavering presence of Demodex mites on my skin provides an odd form of reassurance: I am never alone. There will always be a mite munching on me, helping recycle the cells I shed, probably until the day I die. I merely give the mites food and a warm home. They give me a constant. Isn’t that just a more obscure form of altruism? Maybe only to a poet.
<strong>ISSUE</strong> <strong>IV</strong> 25 Kinetic Tapsety Aaron Lelito
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