our little cousins may join us someday...

This has already happened 50 to 100 million years ago with several insect species. For example, the leaf cutter ants of brazil breed and raise aphids (animal husbandry, they even produce antibiotics to protect the aphids from molds), feeding them processed leaf mash and then milking them for nutritional dew. The ants, of course, also have a complex societal structure and civilization. Not sure in which order these behaviors developed, but they did it all using a fraction of their 100,000 neurons (I'm equally unsure how many neurons the typical human farmer or rancher uses.). Don't want to be around when they first split the atom (the ants, not the human farmers.) Seems us primates, troglodytes and otherwise, are a little slow on the uptake.

Thank you for the correction. You have probably guessed that I am not an antomologist. The interesting point, I think, is that if you try to use agriculture, animal husbandry, and social structure as measures of a species intellectual development, homo sapiens will rank right up there with the social insects. It would be getting us to far off topic to show the evidence that insects even beat us to genetically modified crops.

Please forgive my wordplay. What ever happened to the sense of humor this forum used to enjoy? Seems to have left the same time Faith did.