A
solitary ant, afield, cannot be considered to have much of anything on his
mind; indeed, with only a few neurons strung together by fibers, he can’t be
imagined to have a mind at all, much less a thought. He is more like a ganglion on legs. Four ants together, or ten, encircling a dead moth on a path,
begin to look more like an idea.
- Lewis
Thomas, The Lives of a Cell
(Viking, NY, 1974) p.12