Keller L., Gordon E. The Lives of Ants
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List of illustrations
Fig. 1 The shortest path 63
Fig. 2 Haplo-diploid heredity 166
Fig. 3 Parthenogenesis 187
Fig. 4 Cloning 190
Drawing 1 Great diversity 8
Drawing 2 Parasites 36
Drawing 3 Weaver ants (Oecophylla) 84
Drawing 4 Raising aphids 110
Drawing 5 Invasive ants 136
Drawing 6 Abnormal reproduction 158
Drawing 7 One genome, two phenotypes 194
Drawing 8 Ant robots 216
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Figure acknowledgements
Photographs in the plate section were taken by:
1. a. Alex Wild; b. Alex Wild
2. Alex Wild
3. a. Alex Wild; b. Alex Wild; c. Alex Wild; d. Alex Wild
4. a. Laurent Keller; b. Alex Wild; c. Laurent Keller;
d. Alex Wild
5. a. Alex Wild; b. Alex Wild; c. Alex Wild; d. Alex Wild
6. a. Laurent Keller; b. Alex Wild; c. Daniel Kronauer;
d. Daniel Kronauer
7. a. Daniel Kronauer; b. Alex Wild; c. Daniel Kronauer;
d. Daniel Kronauer
8. a. Alex Wild; b. Alex Wild; c. Alex Wild
9. Alex Wild
10. Daniel Kronauer
11. a. Alex Wild; b. Alex Wild; c. Alex Wild; d. Alex Wild
12. Alex Wild
13. a. Alex Wild; b. Daniel Cherix
14. a. Christian Ko
¨
nig; b. Alex Wild; c. Elva Robinson;
d. Christian Ko
¨
nig
15. a. Christian Ko
¨
nig; b. Christian Ko
¨
nig; c. Christian Ko
¨
nig
16. a. Francesco Mondada; b. Jean-Bernard Billeter & Michael
Krieger; c. Francesco Mondada; d. Markus Waibel
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Introduction
Since time immemorial, human beings have been fascin-
ated, amazed, intrigued, and captivated by ants. And yet,
at first glance, there is nothing particularly attractive
about the tiny creatures. Unlike butterflies, they don’t
have wings with vivid colour patterns; they cannot boast
the iridescent wing-cases seen on many beetles. Nor do
they produce things which human beings like to eat or
wear, such as honey or silk. They don’t even chirp or sing
like crickets or cicadas; and, unlike bees, they never go in
for dancing.
They do, however, have other characteristics which, in their
way, are much more remarkable. For one thing, their social
arrangements are quite extraordinary, almost unique among
living creatures, and have often been compared to human soci-
ety. William Morton Wheeler, the founder of American myrme-
cology, wrote in Ants (1910): ‘The resemblances between men
and ants are so very conspicuous that they were noted even by
aboriginal thinkers.’ For another thing, ants are not only effi-
cient, they are hard-working and thrifty, qualities which have
always seemed like good reasons for seeing them as virtuous
role models.
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In c.1000 bc, King Solomon recommended them, in the Old
Testament, as models of wisdom: ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, over-
seer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth
her food in the harvest’ (Proverbs 6:6–8). The same way of seeing
them turned up centuries later in La Fontaine’s fable ‘The Cicada
and the Ant ’. They are also mentioned in the Koran, which
presents them as a highly developed r ace of beings, and in the
Talmud, again as synonymous with honesty and virtue.
The Greeks, too, Aristotle, Plato, and Plutarch, for instance,
praised these social insects as wise and clever. The Roman
naturalist Pliny the Elder devoted a whole chapter of his Historia
naturalis to them, expatiating on their bravery and strength. He
even mentions ants as big as dogs found in India or Ethiopia: they
acted as guards outside gold-mines and killed any men who
attempted to make off with the precious metal. These accounts
are of course closer to fiction than to fact; but they do attest to
the human appeal of ants, as well as to the fears they could
engender. These figments of Antiquity’s imagination show that
there was an awareness of how aggressive the insects could be.
But what was uppermost in the ancient world’s appreciation of
ants was how they could communicate with one another, devise
their division of labour, and construct nests of such architectural
complexity—which the natural historian Aelian compared to
palatial residences.
The effect of these tiny creatures on human imagination was
such that they inspired many a myth and became incorporated
into belief systems. The Dogon peoples of West Africa saw them
as the wives of the god Amma and the mothers of the first
humans. They were also central to traditional rituals, for ex-
ample among the Wayana-Apalai peoples of Brazil, Surinam,
and French Guyana, where a boy reaching puberty had to
demonstrate that he was worthy of adult status by wearing a
sling f ull of fire ants round his torso or tied to his back, thus
THE LIVES OF ANTS
2
proving he had the courage and endurance to withstand the bites
from these very aggressive creatures.
Literature and film
Nowadays ants have lost their previous importance in legend
and ritual, but instead they figure prominently in books and
films. The French writer Bernard Werber, for instance, is widely
known for his best-selling Ants trilogy (The Empire of the Ants,
T he Day of the Ants, and The Revolution of the Ants). Ants now
figure in a broad range of popular culture, from many works of
science fiction, to novels, children’s books, comics, and video
games.
The creatures are also to be found swarming across television
and cinema screens, with lead roles in many documentaries or
starring in feature films. Sometimes they are presented as a
threat and act out horrific fantasies, as in Gordon Douglas’s
T hem, a Hollywood film of the 1950s in which mutant ants
more than two metres tall spread panic throughout the United
States. Usually, however, they are humanized, endowed with
anthropomorphic physiques and behaviours, and as such
are presented as more congenial to humankind. This is how
they appear in Antz, directed by Eric Darnell and Tim Johnson,
and A Bug’s Life by John Lasseter. Both these animated films,
which appeared in 1998, hold up a mirror to our society by
having as their central characters human-like ants who feel out
of place in a community of conformists, where individuality is
undervalued.
The imaginations of old and young alike have been stimulated
by such fictional insect worlds; and some have even developed a
liking for the real thing. Toy manufacturers have taken advantage
of the vogue for ants and are selling ant aquariums, so to speak,
in which water is replaced by a nutritious gel, thus enabling
INTRODUCTION
3
children to have an ant colony of their own. Household pets were
once goldfish and hamsters; now it’s the turn of ants.
Naturalists or myrmecologists
Ants are a trendy thing nowadays; and even the scientific com-
munity is affected by the vogue. Its beginnings go back to the
eighteenth century, with naturalists such as the Frenchman Rene
´
Antoine Ferchault de Re
´
aumur and the Englishman William
Gould. Following in the footsteps of these illustrious predeces-
sors, the entomologists of our own day, first and foremost the
myrmecologists (the name now given to ant specialists), are
enthusiastic investigators of the lives and ways of these social
insects. Their research leads them into a world that is rich and
full of surprises, and one that, even after decades of observation,
is still full of unsolved mysteries. What is the secret of the huge
ecological success of ants? How did their sociality develop? What
is their social organization like in different species? The universe
of the ant, when subjected to the most advanced methods of
scientific investigation and observed with the magnification
afforded by genetics and molecular biology, can be seen in a
new light and now reveals a range of ways of life that for many
years went unrecognized.
It has long been known that ants were inclined to live in
intricately organized societies made up of individuals that cooper-
ated, communicated, and divided up daily tasks. But now we also
know that they have impressive abilities in finding their way and
quite amazing ingenuity when it comes to building their nests,
finding supplies, or exploiting other members of the animal
kingdom. We can see, too, that they are capable of aggression
and violence, which can disturb the apparent peace of their
colonies and embroil them in fratricidal or matricidal strife.
Even their sexual arrangements can be studied, which has
THE LIVES OF ANTS
4
revealed their at times strange ways of reproducing themselves
and has shown the remarkable stratagems they employ so as to
increase the numbers of copies of genes transferred to their
descendants. In this area, as in many another, they display a
marked originality. They never cease to amaze those who study
them. So, welcome to the wonderful world of ants!
INTRODUCTION
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Part I
An Ecological Success Story