Paraphrasing Walt Whitman (Leaves Of Grass):
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars and a single ant is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
It is most likely that under every rock a dark, silent, highly complex, mostly unknown ecosystem exists. Or, in this case, a teeming metropolis of ants.
One fine autumn day, I was working in our garden and came across a large rock that I decided to move. The boulder must have weighed over 500 lbs., so lifting it was not an option. It was somewhat oval and so I opted to try to roll it to a new location. Using a long lever, I raised it enough to slide my fingers under and begin to roll it. However, as I reached the 15-degree angle, a swarm of very angry red ants boiled out from under the rock. I was immediately shocked by how intelligent they were because they headed for my shoes, up my pants’ legs and began to viciously bite and sting legs.
I quickly dropped the rock, raced to the nearest garden hose, kicked off my shoes, stripped off my pants and began spraying off the painful marauders. Then I shook out my shoes, hung my jeans on our clothesline, and found a clean pair.
What I did then was unconscionable and violated every holistic biological rule that I had been teaching for over 30 years. I can blame it on the painful welts on my legs, but I was clearly in the wrong.
Many years earlier, I had read and agreed with everything Rachel Carson published and believed in her classic environmental book, “Silent Spring.†Her book was a clarion call, warning about the globally destructive use of insecticides. However, about every other year paper wasps would build an elaborate nest on our property and I was concerned that our small children might be attacked by angry wasps. Reluctantly, I kept an aerosol can of insecticide in my workshop.
Even though I fully realized that the ant attack was at least partially my fault, my primitive brain directed me to my shop and within a few minutes I sprayed the insecticide around the base of the rock I was trying to move.
I had nearly forgotten the painful event until a couple of days later. My wife and I were enjoying lunch on our deck when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an astonishing sight. I nearly missed it, but upon closer observation, a single column of ants was heading from the rock battleground (about 75 ft away, down our sidewalk to an unknown destination. Each ant was carrying a single egg which was almost as big as its body.
Of course, I leapt to my feet and followed the miniature caravan. They followed the walkway for an additional 50 feet and then veered off to the base of an old oak trunk. After close inspection, I could see a cleared area around an opening that led down to what was obviously the site of their new ant-city.
I stood enrapt in awe and wonderment and then a flood of questions washed over me.
Assuming that the queen was in control, how did she decide and direct the mass exodus to the new location?
Had she previously sent out recon scouts to find a suitable relocation site?
Were they instructed to leave a chemical trail back to the original colony?
Were all the workers, soldiers, nurses etc. connected to her (and each other) by some unknown process of collective consciousness?
If some of her soldiers were lost in the skirmish did she have a defense minister who could request that she create more soldiers?
How did she envision and communicate construction plans for the new colony?
Like most human cities, did she have a “public works dept.†that controlled food and water supply as well as waste removal?
Not surprisingly, I recalled a wonderfully playful reflection in the classic Nature book, “The Medusa and the Snail,†by celebrated author Lewis Thomas.
“One thing I’d like to know most of all: when ants have made a new Hill, and all are there, touching and exchanging, and the whole mass begins to behave like a single huge creature, and thinks, what on earth is that thought? And while you are at it, I’d like to know a second thing, does any single ant know about it? Does his hair stand on end?â€
Although Thomas was an M.D., scientist, and world-renown Nature author, he used levity to chide his colleagues to acknowledge that they have no model that can explain how behavioral information can be pre-coded on DNA molecules that will enable an organism to process the millions of genetic “decisions†necessary to survive. They have coined the catch-all term instinct, (“an innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuliâ€) however, in spite of massive gains in cellular/molecular biology, instinct remains one of the greatest unexplored frontiers of modern science.
In his wonderfully wise and playful book, The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff addresses the disconnect with the line, “Instinct is just another word for something we don’t understand.â€