Austin Thompson

Ants

One of the most diverse and the most abundant animal families in the world is the ant. Apart from their sheer abundance, ants are, at first glance, quite capable creatures: they are extremely powerful, typically being able to lift more than 10 times their own body weight, and they have one of the highest speeds in the animal kingdom, relative to their body size. Yet, despite all of these great features that the ant boasts, the ant remains upsettingly weak when faced with the challenge of surviving on this planet. For starters, almost any animal is capable of taking down an ant without any struggle. Whether it be antlions, which lure unsuspecting ants into their dens to kill them; spiders, which make use of their great agility and attacking power; or even other ants, which is—surprisingly—one of the most common predators for many ant species. Of course, the struggles of the ant don’t stop at predation, as ants face yet another significant problem: finding food and water. As one might suspect, being nearly blind, outside of seeing basic shapes and colors, ants aren't great when it comes to navigating the ominous terrain of the insect world, which only leaves one question: how in the world do they find food and water? In fact, it would be logical to guess that they rarely do, yet it seems that this is hardly a problem for ants in nature. In fact, all of the problems I have just discussed are hardly problems for ants. But, how does this work, though? The ant’s answer lies in one of, if not, the greatest evolutionary instincts in the history of life: living with other members of their species. The ant colony solves many problems that an ant would normally face, living solitarily. Creatures that would usually prey on ants can now be taken down by the ants working together. Finding food and water isn’t a problem either, as ants can form caravans to search for needed resources. Indeed, by working with one another, each ant has a far greater chance of survival in the cruel insect world.

Apart from simply surviving, the colony serves another grand purpose: creating more ants. Sadly, for almost all ants, love is a stupid way to waste calories, which led to it being naturally selected against, meaning they will never have little baby ants of their own; therefore, ant colonies require a specialized type of ant, the queen ant, to produce more ants. The queen ant has a rather extensive life. The queen starts out as an alate, a type of winged ant from another colony. At some point in the alate’s life, it will leave its colony to begin its great mission, creating a new colony. This is a very difficult task, with almost all alates failing to successfully create a new colony, but, when the alate finally succeeds, it can finally become a queen ant. Although, as said in Britannica that “every ant is an integral unit” to their colony, the queen, due to her role in reproduction, is, without a doubt, the most important ant to the colony’s continued survival, and, in order to ensure the queen’s and, moreover, the colony’s survival, the colony’s ants constantly gather resources and expand the nest, not just to support themselves, but to support the queen as well. So, naturally, being a selfish ant in an ant colony is absolute blasphemy, and will have no benefit; therefore, ants must give up their greed, dedicating their life to serving the colony. Ants do many altruistic things for their colony, primarily, ants must share the food they gather, splitting it with larvae, the queen, or their ant brethren. Of course, the altruism gets much more insane; some of the ant’s other philanthropies include leading charges against animals hundreds of times the size of an ant, sacrificing their precious calories to lay down chemical trails that ensure other ants don’t wander too far from the colony, and even crawling onto invaders, contracting their abdomens to explode themselves, releasing a sticky, toxic substance, which ends up killing both the ant and the invader. Regardless, if these much needed sacrifices were not made by ants, there would be far greater consequences for the colony. 

Of course, ants are not the only creatures that form societies to tackle the problems of solitary life, in fact, millions of species have been estimated to live in some sort of society, but I’d like to discuss one that I am very familiar with: humans. Although the last common ancestor between humans and ants was last seen over half a billion years ago, the similarities between human and ant societies are quite remarkable; however, before human society can be discussed, the individual human must be understood first. By ourselves, we humans have a few outstanding feats. First of all, our intelligence is greater than that of just about every other species that lives on this planet, which proved invaluable to our success as a species. This intelligence also greatly made up for the fact that we are lacking in terms of a few physical and sensual capabilities. The next great trait we have is as simple as a few inches of bone, wrapped in muscle and skin–our thumbs. These simple lobs of meat are what allow us to carry things, which has many benefits, some of those being able carry gathered food, rather than just eating it right there; manipulating small objects, which allows us to perform many of the dexterous actions we do on a daily basis; and many other things, most of which we take for granted. I have only listed a few of the capabilities that we, as humans, have evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, all of which make us quite capable creatures; however, as the ants did before they evolved to be social insects, we face many struggles living solitarily, many of which are quite similar to those that solitary ants would face, which include finding food and water, fighting off predators, as well as several other problems. To solve this problem, humans, just as the ants did, decided to tackle their problems using one grand idea, deciding to live in tribal societies.

Just as the ants have their own objectives when it comes to running their colonies, human societies have many objectives as well, and I’d like to point out that yes, there are many ways that human society is similar to ant society. For starters, finding resources to sustain a human society is a large priority for both humans and ants. By evolving to live with other humans, our early ancestors learned to hunt and gather together, making us able to take down massive creatures, and forage for berries, and whatnot. Additionally, just like ants, although a little different, human society also greatly fuels reproduction. Living with other people allowed us to reproduce at an astonishing rate–doubling, tripling, and even quadrupling populations within a single person’s lifetime. Indeed, by living together, our ancestors flourished as a species, so naturally, our society could only get better.

Throughout the past several millennia our society has grown and developed greatly compared to the tribes we began with. With this, many great things have come: safety, ready access to food and water, and many more great things. However, human societies at such large scales have also brought many bad things to the world, including things like war, which have devastated nearly every part of our planet throughout almost all of recorded history; corruption is also a great problem, as, with a greater sphere of influence, and with more people to rule over, political leaders can control and gain more in unfair ways. I could go on and on about the problems that have been made by our society, but the point is that they wouldn’t have ever come about if we never grew to such a large scale, and now, these problems affect almost every single one of us on almost a daily basis, myself included, and, for me, this led me, as a child, to desire one thing, more than anything else: I wanted to be an ant. 

To me, being an ant would have solved all of my problems—most of which were quite absurd, but I won’t put any disrespect on my younger self, because most of my concerns with being a human were quite logical, at least for my age. If I were an ant, I would be able to escape the true horrors of the world, which included homework, getting yelled at (and then grounded) by my parents, and not being able to constantly hang out with my friends. In fact, if you were to ask single-digit aged me what my number one wish in the world would be, I’d immediately tell you that I wanted to be an ant. I’ve even found myself yearning for the ant nest as a teenager many times, albeit for different reasons than as a child. I really desired a brotherhood, a leader to be loyal to, and a clear job in life. Yet, now I’ve found that this desire is fleeting, and that being an ant is, in fact, not something I want at all these days. As I see it, ant societies are truly hell and not as anthropomorphic as many of us make them out to be. The exigence of this realization all comes from a response by u/cld1984 on a reddit post asking why ants are so loyal to their colonies. Of course, being curious about this, I eagerly rushed to the comments to see an explanation, to which I saw something totally mind blowing. As said by u/cld1984, in response to the original creator of the post “[you are] anthropomorphizing [ants]. It’s almost entirely chemical communication. Ants do what they do in response to chemical pheromones. If you look at the colony as a whole organism it makes more sense. The survival of the colony is beneficial to the individual ant, but the individual ant is entirely expendable if it’s necessary to benefit the colony.” Reading this, everything finally made sense: it was as though each ant was no different than a cell in the human body–useful, but expendable. Being an ant would provide me no escape from the cruelties of the world: it would just make my life worse.

Looking further into the ant colony, if I were to be born into an ant colony, I realize that I would most certainly be a worker ant, as it is the most common type of ant in a colony, giving me the greatest odds of being born as one. Although being part of something bigger than myself is something that I’ve desired throughout my life, this wouldn’t be the ideal way to achieve such a goal. As said by Edward O. Wilson, an American naturalist and biologist, when it comes to being a worker ant, "No task is left undone for more than a very short period of time. No enemy is unmet; no hapless caterpillar fallen from the tree is left uncollected. Also, individuals are able to risk or even to throw away their lives in suicidal ventures on behalf of the colony without greatly reducing the productivity of the colony." This further proves to me that being an ant would not be enjoyable because, for me, even if I were to acknowledge the fact that these duties would greatly help my colony, I would still not be convinced that being an ant would bring me any joy, because it’s important to remember that this “loyalty” is really just a bunch of chemicals telling me what to want, think, and do; therefore, rather than serving something larger than myself, I would be forced into slaving away for an ant empire that held me with little regard.

Realizing the harsh truth behind ant society, I am left with a feeling of dissociation. It’s honestly heartbreaking to realize how ruthlessly survival and reproductively focused ant colonies are, but I realize that, in order to move on, I must begin to appreciate my own society, the human society. As said by Charles A. Ellwood, an American sociologist, “ants are social only in the biological sense. Their activities are indeed marvelous, their industry stupendous, but each movement is predestined by their organic constitution. They learn nothing new. No influence of a non-organic nature is ever felt.” For humans, however, this is not the case: we form meaningful connections with our society and those around us, we strive to change imperfections so that a greater world can be made, and, most importantly, all of this selfless service is optional, highlighting one central fact: when we truly commit ourselves to serving society, it is done out of love, an emotion so complex, yet so sincere, so great, yet so easy to show, and, most importantly, what has made me realize that I am truly glad that I was not born as an ant.