“Some of the species are very intelligent, so much so that they were formerly bred in large quantities for slaves, before the treaty of Mooni supplied Formia with a superior substitute.”
“Did it ever occur to anyone,” I asked, “that these creatures might be either immature or degenerate Formians?”
He was horrified.
“These wild ants,” he explained, “are the basis of one of the great intellectual disputes of this planet—namely, as to whether or not we are merely a superior species of ants, or whether we are an entirely distinct type of being, specially created, and not a part of the animal kingdom at all.
“Most of the university men hold that we are related to these brutes, and this is likewise the more modern view. But fortunately there is an influential body of opinion, high in the politics of this country, which considers that such a view is too degrading to admit of acceptance. And accordingly the Council of Twelve is even now seriously considering a law intended to prohibit the teaching of this dangerous doctrine.”
“How about the Cupians?” I asked. “Have they any such evolutionary problem?”
“No,” he wrote, “fortunately for them, they have no problem of evolution, for they are the only non-egg-laying creatures on Poros, and so do not regard themselves even as mammals.”
Whereat I wondered to myself whether it was not probable that it was this distinctiveness of the Cupians which had inspired the jealous Formians to deny their own obvious kinship to the ants.
In addition to the gr-ool I frequently visited the stuffed specimens in the museum of their Department of Biology.
The absence of any birds either here or at the gr-ool, perplexed me, until I reflected that birds are merely a specialized form of flying lizards on my own earth, and that their occurrence even on earth was merely a not-to-have-been-expected accident. Creatures similar to pterodactyls were among the extinct species on exhibit at Mooni, but birds had never been known on Poros, although I could have sworn to having seen some sort of small bird flitting in tandem pairs in the woods on my second day on the planet.