There are more
ants than any other kind of land animal in the world. A million ants can live
in a few trees, and there may be a quarter of a million in one colony. The
total weight of all the ants in the world is far greater than that of all the
human beings.
Human beings are
extremely interested in the study of ants. The more we study them, the more
they seem to be like ourselves. Our dictionary tells us that the ant is a
social insect. That means that ants live in societies in which they depend on
one another. The societies are not all exactly the same. There are differences
because there are ants of very many kinds -- more than 15, 000 kinds, in fact.
But in general each kind has ants of three main types: queens, males, workers.
The queen has
wings for a time, and one day she flies away with a winged male. The male dies
soon afterwards, but the queen, without her wings, finds a good place for her
new nest and begins to lay eggs there. Worker ants will feed her and protect
the eggs, and they will build as big and as safe a home as they can.
In the ant society
each worker has a special job. Some workers take care of the young, some carry
out building work, and some are soldier ants and do the fighting. Most of the
workers spend a part of their time -- just as we do -- making sure that there
is enough food in the house.
Some ants remind
us of farmers. Their workers gather seeds and store them underground. If the
seeds begin to grow, the ants throw them away round the edges of the nest.
There the growing seeds become fields of “ant rice.” The leaf-cutting ant
allows fungus to grow in certain parts of its colony. Other ants keep
“cows”--larger insects which provide “milk” for the colony.
The ants have a
good many enemies. They include birds, bears, and “ant-eaters” of various
kinds. In some cases other ants are their worst enemies, just as man’s worst
enemy is man. In some parts of the world red ants march in large armies to
attack the homes of black ants. They send lines of scouts out to find the black
ant colonies. When the scouts rush back with a report, the red ants form
columns and march to the attack. Meanwhile, the black ants are blocking the
entrances to their tunnels with all the stones and mud that their engineers and
workers can find.
The red ants
attack. Some of them succeed in getting inside the tunnels. They try to carry
the black ant babies away. The black ants do all they can to prevent that. They
send their biggest soldiers into action. These have very large heads with
powerful jaws. The black soldiers make a circling movement -- like the
motorized columns of a modern human army -- to cut off the red robber ants.
Very many of the robber ants’ soldiers and workers are killed, but some escape
with babies belonging to the black ants. They take the babies home and bring
them up in their own colony because they have no workers of their own. When
these ants grow up, they become the only workers in the red ants’ colony.
Some ants make
life very uncomfortable for anyone who goes near their colony. But other ants
find us very useful. They like the food we eat, and so they come into our
houses and gardens to get it. They visit us in thousands when we have a picnic.
The ants on a ship may have got there by accident, but they seem to be quite at
-home as the ship sails round the world. Sometimes they have left the ships and
started colonies in foreign countries. Ants accept town life (some of them) and
will make a home as near to our kitchen as possible -- in a hole in the wall,
under the ground just outside, or under the kitchen itself.
One question
remains. Studies of ant life tell us that these creatures live in colonies,
keep farms, go to war, carry off slaves, and have a society rather like our
own. But do they think? Are they intelligent? Should the proverb really advise
the lazy man -- the sluggard -- to watch the ant in order to learn to be wise?
Go to the ant, you sluggard,
watch her ways and get wisdom.
She has no overseer, no governor or ruler;
but in summer she prepares her store of food
and lays in her supplies at harvest.
But probably the worker ants who get the food do
not know what they are doing. They are controlled entirely by instinct.
