Knowledge Worker

Biological Parallel

Naked mole rats have specialized "scouts" who explore tunnels for food sources and return to teach others the route through tactile communication and leading behavior. These scouts aren't physically different—they're cognitively specialized, holding spatial knowledge others lack. Similarly, older elephant matriarchs remember water sources from droughts 40 years prior, making them irreplaceable knowledge repositories. Drucker's knowledge worker is any organism where the primary asset is experiential information rather than physical capacity. When poachers kill matriarchs, they're not removing muscle—they're destroying decades of accumulated expertise the herd cannot replace.