Q, upon joining the crew of the Enterprise, in “DŽjˆ Q” "Restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation ... whenever possible.... The colony is integrated as though it were in fact one organism ruled by a genome that constrains behavior as it also enables it.... The physical superorganism acts to adjust the demographic mix so as to optimize its energy economy.... The austere rules allow of no play, no art, no empathy." The Borg are among the most frightening, and intriguing, species of alien creature ever portrayed on the television screen. What makes them so fascinating, from my point of view, is that some organism like them seems plausible on the basis of natural selection. Indeed, although the paragraph quoted above provides an apt description of the Borg, it is not taken from a Star Trek episode. Rather it appears in a review of Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson's Journey to the Ants, and it is a description not of the Borg but of our own terrestrial insect friends.
