ANTS QUOTES II
quotations about ants
It is possible in ants to make the love of sweets struggle with the sense of duty, when enemies are made to attack a colony and honey is placed before the ants streaming forth to defend their nest. I have done this with Formica pratensis. At first the ants partook of the honey, but only for an instant. The sense of duty conquered and all of them without exception, hurried forth to battle and most of them to death. In this case a higher decision of instinct was victorious over the lower impulse.
AUGUSTE FOREL
Ants and Some Other Insects: An Inquiry Into the Psychic Powers of These Animals With an Appendix on the Peculiarities of Their Olfactory Sense
The ant finds kingdoms in a foot of ground.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENÉT
John Brown's Body
Ant 1: So, uh, do you ever worry that your itsy little neck is just going to snap under the weight of your head?
Ant 2: Stop asking me that. You ask me that, like, every five minutes.
Ant 1: Sometimes I notice my antennae out of the corner of my eye and I'm all, like: AHH! Something is on me! Get it off! Get it off!
Ant 2: Yeah, the antennae again. Listen, I just remembered, I have to go walk around aimlessly now.
JIM BENTON
Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers
Every ruler sleeps on an anthill.
AFGHANI PROVERB
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
EZRA POUND
The Pisan Cantos
Many ants kill a camel.
TURKISH PROVERB
You feel like an ant contemplating Chicago.
ROBERT FULGHUM
The New York Times Magazine, 1989
We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play.
BERT HOLLDOBLER
The Ants
While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.
EDWARD O. WILSON
Naturalist
The ant is knowing and wise, but he doesn't know enough to take a vacation. The worshipper of energy is too physically energetic to see that he cannot explore certain higher fields until he is still.
CLARENCE DAY
This Simian World
Ants offer special advantages for some important kinds of basic biological research. The colony is a superorganism. It can be analyzed as a coherent unit and compared with the organism in the design of experiments, with the individuals treated as the rough analogues of cells.
BERT HOLLDOBLER
The Ants
An ant is over six feet tall when measured by its own foot-rule.
SLOVENIAN PROVERB
The little ant at its hole is full of courage.
AFRICAN PROVERB
Since time immemorial, human beings have been fascinated, 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 society.
LAURENT KELLER & ELISABETH GORDON
The Lives of Ants
Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into wars, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves. The families of weaver ants engage in child labor, holding their larvae like shuttles to spin out the thread that sews the leaves together for their fungus gardens. They exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.
LEWIS THOMAS
A Long Line of Cells: Collected Essays
An ant hole may collapse an embankment.
JAPANESE PROVERB
One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
Ants use chemicals called pheromones to communicate, laying trails to, for instance, lead their comrades to food. It's a brilliant little adaptation: essentially a shout of "hey, over here" that lasts a really long time. It's especially convenient considering that ants can't actually shout.
MATT SIMON
"Ants Are Really Good At Sniffing Out Enemies -- Literally", Wired, August 13, 2015
I love ants. Do they have uncles? Ha Ha!
ELMO
Sesame Street
Life is priceless even to an ant.
XIAOBO LIU
June Fourth Elegies