Journey to the Ants

As I like to learn more about the other creatures with whom we share this planet, I recently read a book about ants, Journey to the Ants, by Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson. It's a 200-page adaptation for the general public of their 700+page 1991 Pullitzer Prize-winning tome, Ants.

Ants are fascinating! Although they are tiny little creatures, they engage in a wide variety of intelligent, complex behaviors that we typically associate only with humans. For example, many ant colonies intentionally wage wars against neighboring ant colonies. First, they send out scouts who locate the enemy. After marking the enemy's location, the scouts return to the nest for reinforcement by the 'soldiers,' who are larger ants of the same species that are more aggressive and better suited for fighting (check out this picture--the solider is on the right--notice the spikes on his back--yikes!). Then they pour out en masse and swarm the enemy. In addition to waging wars, some ants make raids of other ant colonies not to fight a big battle but to steal in and take hostages that they will turn into slave laborers.

Some types of leafcutter ants are gardeners. They cut up pieces of fresh leaves and take them back to their nest. They chew up the leaves and then use the paste as a fertilizer on which they grow fungi that is their main food source. Other types of ants are farmers, tending 'cattle' in the form of aphids (small insects). The ants guard the aphids and continually move them to fresh areas of plant growth, which the aphids eat. The aphids then give off a sugary secretion which the ants eat. Stunning to find such multi-step intelligence from such tiny creatures. And these are just a few of many examples from the ant world. If you're at all curious about ants, I highly recommend this book.

Wilson and Holldobler, aside from being two of the most respected myrmecologists in the world, are also very thoughtful writers. Their final two paragraphs offer some humbling perspective on the respective roles that humans and ants play for life on Earth:

"If all of humanity were to disappear, the remainder of life would spring back and flourish. The mass of extinctions now under way would cease, the damaged ecosystems heal and expand outward. If all the ants somehow disappeared, the effect would be exactly the opposite, and catastrophic. Species extinction would increase even more over the present rate, and the land ecosystems would shrivel more rapidly as the considerable services provided by these insects were pulled away.

Humanity will in fact live on, and so will ants. But humankind's actions are impoverishing the earth; we are obliterating vast numbers of species and rendering the biosphere a far less beautiful and interesting place for human occupancy. The damage can be fully repaired by evolution only after millions of years, and only then if we let the ecosystems grow back. Meanwhile let us not despise the lowly ants, but honor them. For a while longer at least, they will help to hold the world in balance to our liking, and they will serve as a reminder of what a wonderful place it was when first we arrived."