The Wisdom of Ants
In my ongoing reading adventures with the five-year-olds at Old South Church, we found ourselves this week thinking our way into the tiny world of ants. They’d just been to the Franklin Park Zoo, where they delighted in the big animals – “lions and tigers and bears – oh my!” To find our way into the ants’ lives, and the story I’d chosen for the week, we tried together to imagine what it would be like to be an ant – including what kind of houses they lived in, what they liked to eat, and the dangers they faced in their lives. The kids know a lot about ants; perhaps you do, too, though most adults don’t notice ants as more than the nuisance they can often be.
Some years ago, I was amazed to discover Pulitzer Prize-winners Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson’s remarkable book, Ants, in which they remind us how sophisticated these insects really are: as they suggest, these tiny creatures “run much of the terrestrial world as the premier soil turners, channelers of energy, dominatrices of the insect fauna,” and “employ the most complex forms of chemical communication of any animals.” Indeed, these researchers argue that ants represent nothing less than “the culmination of insect evolution,” just as we humans do in the vertebrate realm. But most of us, scientists included, don’t know much about them. There are fewer than five hundred “myrmecologists” (i.e., ant scientists) in the entire world, a puny number alongside the estimated one million-trillion ants living on the earth at any given moment. Did you know, for instance, that the cumulative size and weight of the ant kingdom is roughly equivalent to that of humans? Amazing things, these hardy insects.
The children I read with are clearly on the way to an intimate acquaintance with them, as I discovered, and they were adept at entering into the ants’ world in their mind’s eye. Before reading the story, we tried to imagine our way into their life: we thought about where they lived and what they ate, as well as the dangers they faced – such as the predators which might eat them, like spiders or termites (well, I’m not sure about the latter, but they surely were!), and what might smash them, like flat-bottomed shoes (“because ants aren’t flat; they’re round!” one insisted) or tennis rackets (one of the children confessed how she’d gone after a bunch of ants with such a weapon) or cars or trucks driving indifferently across their paths. I didn’t tell them about observant Sikhs, and their habit of brushing the path before them to avoid injuring these God-given beings, but they had their own worries for ants’ safety and told various stories about the trials and tribulations they imagined ants to have.
What was fascinating to discover as the story unfolded – Two Bad Ants, written by one of the better known writers and illustrators of children’s books, Chris van Allsburg – was how an ant’s world and our human world intersect. And, yes, most of the children spoke with a pride that parents and homeowners might not share that they’d seen lots of ants in their houses. And why? Well, one explained the matter in simple, Darwinian terms: “Because they’re hungry, and they need to eat!” and then admitted that ants always found things like pieces of potato chips or cookie crumbs she’d ignored cleaning up. Our neglected throw-aways can be an ant’s treasures, to be sure.
Van Allsburg’s ingenious story is about two particular “bad” ants who decide they won’t follow the lead of all the others and take a single crystal of sugar back with them to their underground ant house. Instead, they prove irresistible consumers and gorge themselves recklessly of the abundance found in the kitchen sugar bowl. In an exhausted state, they fall asleep, only to be awakened in the morning by what was for them a huge silver “shovel” (a.k.a. spoon) scooping them up and throwing them into a lake of hot, brown liquid (coffee). You can imagine how dangerous the journey was from that point on, as they found themselves carried on an English muffin into a hot toaster, and then thrown down the garbage disposal, and finally almost electrocuted after seeking shelter in an outlet. Quite a day of travail! Fortunately, this story has a happy ending: these “bad” ants see the light and reform their appetites, joining the returning line of pillagers who came that night for more sugar, this time taking only what they needed – a single crystal – and returning with the others back to the ant hole.
What was so interesting in the children’s running exegesis of the book was how easy it was for them to imagine their way into an ant’s lives, with all its attendant dangers and hopes which seem at first glance so different from our own. But are they? Perhaps, finally, our lives and theirs often vary only in degree. The proverbist thought so, and wrote eloquently of their wisdom: “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise!” (Prov. 6. 6). We like the ants have to learn a proper diligence. With them, we must interpret properly the signs around us in order to remain safe. We also need to know when enough is enough, with food and with sleep. (“How long will you lie there, O sluggard?”) And, like the crafty ants, we need to remember that, great as adventures often are, home is what we’re finally made for.
Mark S. Burrows
Theologian-in-Residence, Old South Church (Boston)
Professor of the History of Christianity
Some years ago, I was amazed to discover Pulitzer Prize-winners Bert Hölldobler and E. O. Wilson’s remarkable book, Ants, in which they remind us how sophisticated these insects really are: as they suggest, these tiny creatures “run much of the terrestrial world as the premier soil turners, channelers of energy, dominatrices of the insect fauna,” and “employ the most complex forms of chemical communication of any animals.” Indeed, these researchers argue that ants represent nothing less than “the culmination of insect evolution,” just as we humans do in the vertebrate realm. But most of us, scientists included, don’t know much about them. There are fewer than five hundred “myrmecologists” (i.e., ant scientists) in the entire world, a puny number alongside the estimated one million-trillion ants living on the earth at any given moment. Did you know, for instance, that the cumulative size and weight of the ant kingdom is roughly equivalent to that of humans? Amazing things, these hardy insects.
The children I read with are clearly on the way to an intimate acquaintance with them, as I discovered, and they were adept at entering into the ants’ world in their mind’s eye. Before reading the story, we tried to imagine our way into their life: we thought about where they lived and what they ate, as well as the dangers they faced – such as the predators which might eat them, like spiders or termites (well, I’m not sure about the latter, but they surely were!), and what might smash them, like flat-bottomed shoes (“because ants aren’t flat; they’re round!” one insisted) or tennis rackets (one of the children confessed how she’d gone after a bunch of ants with such a weapon) or cars or trucks driving indifferently across their paths. I didn’t tell them about observant Sikhs, and their habit of brushing the path before them to avoid injuring these God-given beings, but they had their own worries for ants’ safety and told various stories about the trials and tribulations they imagined ants to have.
What was fascinating to discover as the story unfolded – Two Bad Ants, written by one of the better known writers and illustrators of children’s books, Chris van Allsburg – was how an ant’s world and our human world intersect. And, yes, most of the children spoke with a pride that parents and homeowners might not share that they’d seen lots of ants in their houses. And why? Well, one explained the matter in simple, Darwinian terms: “Because they’re hungry, and they need to eat!” and then admitted that ants always found things like pieces of potato chips or cookie crumbs she’d ignored cleaning up. Our neglected throw-aways can be an ant’s treasures, to be sure.
Van Allsburg’s ingenious story is about two particular “bad” ants who decide they won’t follow the lead of all the others and take a single crystal of sugar back with them to their underground ant house. Instead, they prove irresistible consumers and gorge themselves recklessly of the abundance found in the kitchen sugar bowl. In an exhausted state, they fall asleep, only to be awakened in the morning by what was for them a huge silver “shovel” (a.k.a. spoon) scooping them up and throwing them into a lake of hot, brown liquid (coffee). You can imagine how dangerous the journey was from that point on, as they found themselves carried on an English muffin into a hot toaster, and then thrown down the garbage disposal, and finally almost electrocuted after seeking shelter in an outlet. Quite a day of travail! Fortunately, this story has a happy ending: these “bad” ants see the light and reform their appetites, joining the returning line of pillagers who came that night for more sugar, this time taking only what they needed – a single crystal – and returning with the others back to the ant hole.
What was so interesting in the children’s running exegesis of the book was how easy it was for them to imagine their way into an ant’s lives, with all its attendant dangers and hopes which seem at first glance so different from our own. But are they? Perhaps, finally, our lives and theirs often vary only in degree. The proverbist thought so, and wrote eloquently of their wisdom: “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise!” (Prov. 6. 6). We like the ants have to learn a proper diligence. With them, we must interpret properly the signs around us in order to remain safe. We also need to know when enough is enough, with food and with sleep. (“How long will you lie there, O sluggard?”) And, like the crafty ants, we need to remember that, great as adventures often are, home is what we’re finally made for.
Mark S. Burrows
Theologian-in-Residence, Old South Church (Boston)
Professor of the History of Christianity
posted by Andover Newton News at
1:49 PM
<< Home