Neurologist Robert Sapolsky explores the genetic differences between humans and chimps, and describes the few genes that make our species unique. Our two species share over ninety-eight percent of the same genes, with only one major trait separating us from other primates: an abundance of neurons in the brain.
“Take a chimp brain fetally and let it go two or three more rounds of division and you get a human brain instead,” says Sapolsky. “And, out come symphonies, ideologies and hopscotch.”
Nature gives us a lot of examples of complex behavior emerging from the interaction of many individuals. The members of an ant colony are capable of a wide variety of complex behaviors: finding and transporting food, constructing elaborate underground complexes of tunnels and chambers, defending their territory from invaders.
Such activity would seem to involve a great deal of planning, memory, and coordination. But there is no head ant who draws up a blueprint for the colony and gives directions to the worker ants. Instead, each ant follows a very simple set of rules, based on cues from its environment and from the activity of ants nearby
