Letters to the Editor
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Why Wall Street should be more like a cockroach
There is an old saying: Every financial maven should stick to his last.
The analogy to the cockroach is more appeopriate than you intended.
"Cockroaches Are Morons In The morning, Geniuses In The Evening", Vandebilt biologists report daily variations in the cockroach's learning ability is controlled by its biological clock.
Another report finds that cockroaches avoid light, but will follow another into dangerous situations because it uses a scent trail, in this case pheromones on a robotic roach.
The biologic answer is that herd animals, walking, crawling, flying, swimming, or burrowing, and most cellular creatures, are followers. Leadership is an accidental position. It simply means that an indivisual is being followed. If the group that follows becomes too ungainly, one may lose contact and become a leader who will retain those that were following, not from any desire to be led, but by an instinct to follow.
Only humans have the ability to add ego to the needs for sex and safety in numbers in an accidental and tempory leadership position - because they are not following as they should.