The Lives of Ants is a story of ants written by the most well-known ant expert, Laurent Keller, and a professional science reporter, Elisabeth Gordon. Although you have little knowledge about ants, it’s easy to approach. What distinguishes this book from other books about ants is that it includes the matters that can be applied to the modern society and even possible research topics.
As everyone knows, ants are hard-working insects. Actually, ‘hard-working’ is not enough to fully express their nature. No one knows how many ants live on the Earth. According to the researchers who have been patient enough to try to count the number of ants on the Earth, the book holds an assumption that there are about a hundred trillion ants. It is more than the human population and about the same as a number of human cells in the body. The sheer number of ants is high, but their total weight is also gigantic. If we estimate an ant to be as light as 3 milligrams, it aggregates to an enormous value. This value corresponds to a tenth of the total weight of land animals. And only considering rainforest animals, the weight of ants is way larger. Isn’t it surprising? They are tiny little insects, but seen as a whole, their presence becomes enormous.
Moreover, there are so many various types of ants. Depending on their types, their specialization varies. Farming ants make farmland and exquisitely do farming. Some ants weave hemp clothes, and defoliating ants eliminate unnecessary plants. Some ants aggressively guard their habitats by shooting formic acid when they are threatened. Soldier ants inhabiting in Africa or South America even eat up a livestock within few hours. Queen ants lay eggs and worker ants take care of the eggs. Some ants stack up dead ants to make a cemetery. Honey pot ants regurgitate nectar to feed some specific worker ants in deserts, in order to prevent the loss of nutrients. Likewise, ants adapt to various environments and even come up with strategies to survive from extreme conditions. Ants work efficiently by communicating and sharing information with one another in their own way. Having their own jobs, they accomplish everything together. Nothing is impossible for ants.
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The book includes some research topics for ants in convergence with totally different fields in the end; to name a few, calculating the shortest distance using habits of ants, managing credibility of clients at a bank, and developing a robot using ants. It is astonishing to find out that the ant society can be applied to enhance various parts of our life.
Most of the people think ants are insignificant creatures and they do not even care about them at all. An individual ant seems insignificant, however, the ants, i.e. the society of ants, are gigantic indeed. For a new year, my teacher gave words of wisdom to me, “the generation of parrots, in which we only talk, is gone. Now, it is the generation of ants.” Ants are always in good order and coexistence. They help one another while carrying out their own roles, too. Today, why don’t we put ourselves down and become an ant? Even now, ants are constructing their own kingdom by doing their jobs together, in perfect harmony. This is the generation of ants.
