Mitochondria can be conceptualized as social organisms, exhibiting features like division of labor and differentiation, analogous to social insects like ants.

“and one way we think about this is I think it's uh it makes a lot of sense to think about mitochondria as social organisms >> and there multiple features of mitochondrial biology that obey you know what u behavioral social scientists you know classify as as social you know if you study ants for example there's like a few rules that we know ants are social creatures because uh they form groups right and there are different types they they divide there's division of labor you have worker ants that, you know, work really hard and you have a warrior ants that are like really chubby and like they're they're here to defend the the hive. They like to fight. Yeah. Exactly. So, those two types of ants, you look at them side by side, there's like this little flimsy super like uh uh active worker ant and then this like chubby uh warrior ant. Genetically, they're they're identical. >> They have the same genome. They came as, you know, little larae from the, you know, the queen. Uh but their their morphology is super different. behavior is is very different. Uh but through development there are cues that you know are are um uh uh applied to the different larve and then they end up becoming a worker or a warrior. Uh so the same kind of thing happens uh in in mitochondria.”