Society of Ants

Hafsa Ahsan presents the life of an ant, the awesome little wonder of nature!

Who is not familiar with ants? I am sure you have seen groups of them crawling up your walls, brushed one when it tried to crawl up your arm, and even given a small shriek when it finally succeeded in biting you. But do you ever observe them closely? The ant is a perfect manifestation of one of the miracles of Allah that we see in our daily lives.

Ants live in colonies and a perfect division of labor exists amongst them. When we take a closer look at their systems, we shall also see that they have a pretty interesting social structure.

It will also come to our attention that they are capable of sacrifice at a much higher level than humans are.

One of the most interesting points is that, compared to humans, they do not know the concepts such as the rich-poor discrimination and the fight for power that are observed in our societies.

Many scientists, who for years have been doing extensive research on ants, have not been able to clarify the subject of their advanced social behavior. Caryle P. Haskins, Ph.D., the president of the Carnegie Institute at Washington has this to say:

“After sixty years of observation and study, I still marvel at how sophisticated the ants’ social behavior is. …The ants thus make a beautiful model for our use in studying the roots of animal behavior.” (National Geographic) Some colonies of ants are so extensive with respect to population and living area, that it is impossible to explain how they can form a perfect order over such a vast area. Therefore, it is not easy not to concur with Dr. Haskins. As an example of these large colonies we can give the species of ant, called Formica Yessensis that lives on the Ishikari coast of Hokkaido. This ant colony lives in 45,000 interconnected nests over an area of 2.7 square kilometers. The colony, which is composed of approximately 1,080,000 queens and 306,000,000 workers, has been named the “Super colony” by the researchers. (Bert Hölldobler-Edward O.Wilson, The Ants, Harvard University Press, 1990, p. 1.) It has been discovered that all production tools and food are exchanged in an orderly fashion within the colony. It is very hard to explain how the ants have maintained this order without any problems, considering the vast area they are living in. We must not forget that various security forces are needed for enforcing law and maintaining social order, even in a civilized country with a low population density, and there is an administrative staff leading and managing these units. Sometimes, it does not become possible to maintain the required order without problems despite all these intense efforts.

Yet, in ant colonies there is no need felt for police, gendarmerie or guards. If we consider that, actually the duty of the queens, whom we think of as the leaders of the colonies, is just to maintain the species, they do not have a leader or a governor. There is thus no hierarchy based on a chain of command amongst them. Then who is it that lays down this order and maintains its continuity?

The fact that ants can establish such a great and perfect order is proof that they are acting on the inspiration of a certain “supervisor”.

The verse below fully confirms that God is the master and supervisor of everything and that every living creature acts on His inspiration: “I have put my trust in God, my Lord and your Lord. There is not a moving (living) being He does not hold by the forelock and inspect! My Lord is on a straight path.” (Surah Hud – 11:56)