Communal peeing: a new mode of flood control in ants

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:34 PM -0500 4/1/01, Mark Odegard wrote:
>The April 2000 issue of _Natural History_ mentions an article by Ulrich
>Maschwitz and Joachim Moog (p. 18, col. 3 'Flood Relief'). The abstract is
>found here, with a link to the pdf-format article (if you are a subscriber
>to Spring's online stuff).
>http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00114/bibs/0087012/00870563.htm
>
>Putting 'peeing' into the title of a peer-reviewed scientific article says
>something the acceptability of 'peeing' as formal English, at least to
>Germans.
>
>For myself, 'peeing', 'go pee', etc., is the usual colloquial term. It's the
>one you use with small children. There is nothing 'dirty' about the terms,
>but it's one you use with discretion. I would not have used it in formal
>written English.
>
>So. Has 'peeing' attained the status of *formal* English?
>
>It occurs to me that, for ants, 'urination' might not be technically correct
>(I don't know if insects form urine, or even if they have a urinary tract
>parallel to that in higher animals), so some other word or term might be
>appropriate, but the choice of 'peeing' does call attention to itself.
>
>The actual text of the abstract puts the word into quotes, indicating the
>authors were aware there might be some raised eyebrows about the usage.
>

I agree with your diagnosis of the "Communal Peeing" article--it does
seem odd in the given context.  If not "urination", how about
"micturition".  That seems...can I say dry? enough for a scientific
publication.  (The OED glosses it as 'the desire to make water; a
morbid frequency in the voiding of urine' but goes on to admit that
it is 'often used incorrectly [sic] for the action of making water'.
In fact in my (limited) experience, it's used mostly in this
"incorrect" sense.)

larry