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Comment by enkid | Hacker News Reader

Multicellularity evolved independently many times (25 according to Wikipedia). It first potentially to evolved 3 billion years ago.

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Multi-body organisms have also independently evolved - bees, termites, ants, wasps.

Let's not forget single-body multi organisms ...

More than half your body is not human

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-43674270

Also mantis shrimp and naked mole rats. These are all creatures that have evolved a reproducing queen and sterile workers. However, I don't like the definition of calling a colony of such creatures an "organism" because it implies the only purpose of an organism to reproduce. You then end up getting weird edge cases like fig trees and fig wasps being a "single organism." Also, male/female pairs of humans would be a strong angle organism.

> it implies the only purpose of an organism to reproduce

Isn't that the evolutionary purpose (if there is a purpose at all) of all life?

Not sure that this list illustrates that. Not only are these all insects, they are all of the same order, hymenoptera, ie somewhat closely related.

The organisms referred to by the GP are not insects. They are social colonies chiefly made up of insects as their component parts, but the whole is greater than the sum of parts. Consider fungi, microscopic plants, and even aphids which are farmed, to be parts of these organisms, not to mention the elaborate dwelling structures. These social organisms go far beyond individually embodied insects.

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