E.O. Wilson of Ants and Men

An exploration of the remarkable life and groundbreaking ideas of biologist E.O Wilson, founder of the discipline of sociobiology, world authority on insects and Pulitzer-prize winning writer on the subject of human nature.

Wilson went down to Florida Bay, where there are thousands of mangrove islands, used an exterminator to fumigate some islands and eliminate all of its creatures. He did this so he could then carefully record the rate at which insect species re-colonized the little island. The result strikingly confirmed his hypothesis that resulted in a book called The Theory of Island Biogeography.

Our minds and emotions evolved in nature. To understand them we have to understand that evolution. We know a lot about how the human form came about and the rate at which the forebrain grew and the head shaped. But the one thing that’s been lacking in the explanation of the origin of humanity and, therefore, lacking in terms of the meaning of humanity is the origin of our social behavior.

The word biodiversity spread around the world at astonishing speed, and people began to use it to realize that there was something more to living nature than just the occasional big pictures of jungles they see.