quotations about ants
When news spread that South Carolina was infested with "squirming mats of fire ants" after its historic flooding in October, the Internet went wild. As it turns out, these living rafts are more than just a viral sensation. Engineers, biologists, and physicists have been studying the collective behavior of fire ants for years. Unlike other species, these ants build rafts during floods to stay afloat for days--as well as construct bridges, ladders, and walls--by linking their bodies together. The hope is that someday people can learn from ants to develop building material that can better respond to nature, and perhaps even heal itself.
LINDA POON
"Fire Ants Are Inspiring Building Materials of the Future", Citylab, November 2, 2015
They rarely come alone. They march single file through miniscule cracks around windows or under doors, looking for crumbs, water or a warm place to make a new home. Often you'll see them trooping up your walls or across your counter, organized and on a mission. You have an ant invasion.
MARY JO DILONARDO
"What kind of ants are in my house?", Mother Nature Network, August 10, 2015
Ants are bizarrely unlike people, and yet there's a hint of human behavior at work in ant colonies. They are just strange enough, while also being similar enough, to prick the imagination. This has led thinkers throughout history to compare ants to people. Why aren't we more like them? Or are we actually more akin to ants than we'd like to believe?
NATHANAEL JOHNSON
Unseen City
Ants can behave like liquids and solids nearly at the same time -- at least, according to Georgia Tech Associate Professor David Hu. "Ants are like no living thing on Earth," Hu said. "They can both be a solid and a liquid and bounce back and forth between those two states at the same time." ... Hu demonstrates this by showing the viewer a couple examples. In the first, ants are placed over water and "form a raft" or solid structure "that allows the ants to survive." In another example, Hu shows how the ants behave like liquid by dropping a coin on a wall of the insects. The ants move out of the way before reforming after the coin has passed through. "This is self repair. No other objects do this," he said. "Why does this matter? Imagine I have a glass window and I throw a brick through it. Instead of having shards of window glass, imagine if the window were made of ants or other active material. The glass shards would reform, self-heal, allow the brick to pass and then form a complete new window at the end of this process. This is the dream of active matter."
OLIVER DARCY
"Professor Says 'Ants Are Like No Living Thing on Earth'", The Blaze, November 2, 2015
If you cut through a pile of ants, they'll simply let the knife go through, then reform on the other side. They're like liquid metal -- just like that scene in the Terminator movie.
DAVID HU
"Professor Says 'Ants Are Like No Living Thing on Earth'", The Blaze, November 2, 2015
The instincts of the ant are very unimportant, considered as the ants; but the moment a ray of relation is seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty heart, then all its habits, even that said to be recently observed, that it never sleeps, become sublime.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Language", English Traits
Some ants box, hitting their opponents at a blazing fast rate of nearly 42 strikes per second, new slow-motion video reveals. The Florida-dwelling trap-jaw ant Odontomachus brunneus appears to have set a world record, becoming the fastest known boxer on the planet.... Worker ants are usually the ones in these antennal boxing bouts. The fighting determines which ant has to stay in the nest and which gets to go out into the world to forage.
JENNIFER VIEGAS
"Ants Are Good Boxers, Video Shows", Discovery, February 11, 2016
Even the sharpest ear cannot hear an ant singing.
SUDANESE PROVERB
Modern ants are social insects with a fascinating and complex societal structure. These hardworking insects appear down-to-earth -- because they literally are -- and seem so cooperative with each other that you wouldn't think they would have had violent tendencies. Surprisingly, they do. Like human groups, prehistoric colonies of ants have fought with each other over territory and food. The only difference, however, is that ants have begun fighting long before humans did: at least 100 million years ago.
ALYSSA NAVARRO
"Amber Shows Prehistoric Ants Were Socializing And Fighting 100 Million Years Ago", Tech Times, February 15, 2016
A harvester ant never quits and she never, ever gives up.
LADENE MAYVILLE
Hallie the Harvester Ant
To recognize one another in the colony--worker caste versus soldier caste, for instance--ants use hydrocarbon compounds secreted onto their tough exoskeletons. And new research out today in Cell Reports shows just how complex these blends of hydrocarbons are and how adept ants are at sniffing them out. The blends not only vary minutely between castes, but between colonies, allowing a given society to rapidly detect and kill intruders. That's right: Ants are on the lookout for their enemies' BO.
MATT SIMON
"Ants Are Really Good At Sniffing Out Enemies -- Literally", Wired, August 13, 2015