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what would a queen bee be called if queens never existed? (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by pelletbucket@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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like what if the first person to coin the phrase, for the one bee that lays around just producing offspring, lived in a world that had no monarchies? or, were radically opposed to the concept.

also what do you think we would name them today if we just found them?

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[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago

Whatever the equivalent word would be. Leader, chief, boss, it doesn't really matter.

As long as the concept of a single leader existed, it would have been applied to something like bees. Wouldn't need monarchies to recognize a central focus of an insect group, and pick the closest word for that.

You could maybe argue that there might be some alien species that had no concept of ever needing a decision maker, and they would have to coin a new word for the main reproductive entity of a hive. Something like mother might be used, if the aliens had that concept at all. Perhaps "generator" would be a close enough equivalent that the imaginary aliens would be almost certain to have a similar enough concept.

But humans had a concept of needing someone to make decisions about things way back. So I don't think it's a realistic enough idea to say that in the absence of monarchy that we wouldn't have some kind of term for a person in charge.