If I hadn’t been bitten by a fire ant the other day, it would never have occurred to me to write about ants. Despite cortisone cream, fire bites sting, burn, and take several days to heal.

In primitive human societies, ant bites were considered to have healing powers; therefore ant stings were used in initiation ceremonies as a test of endurance. That must mean that I am initiated into something without my consent and not for the first time either.

Considering your point of view, I really don’t put much blame on the ants. To them, we must seem as careless and much bigger than Gulliver’s giants. They must suffer multiple casualties every day, even if our clumsy feet unknowingly commit their murders. When we step on an ant, the crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone in high concentration. That sends other nearby ants into a war frenzy and causes them to attack anything around the nest.

This waste of ant life is multiplied by the thousands under the sudden Florida rains that flood his commune and by the pest control man who visits once a month causing ants martyrs due to the extermination industry. He watched that Terminex guy at his work, waging biological warfare at its finest. Wherever he found an anthill, he would put some pellets and water it down. That much stress would make any species go berserk and strike back with a vengeance.

To overcome their aggravation, the fireants’ ancestors play a role in their behavioral genes. Ants are thought to have evolved from wasps and must have held wasp-aggressive behavior somewhere in their DNA structure because their sting hurts and swells like a wasp sting. Worse still, some species of ants, called killer ants, tend to attack much larger animals while searching for food or defending their nests.

The ant colony functions as a unit. In that unit there are many ants that act, according to their individual function, for the whole colony to make the life of the ant practical and effective. Even if there is separation between the ants, their existence is a complete item. An ant colony does not consist of little things attached to each other as in human societies; each ant is a part of the whole without being separate. The unity of the ants is in harmony with the forces of nature.

Imagine being without legs or arms and needing the total care of others in your youth. Well, that’s the life of an ant for you. Ants do not develop their legs until they are fully developed; They are completely dependent on nurse ants. When baby ants develop, they grow six legs with prominent elbows, or should we say knees, and they go to work. The worker ants spent their internship of a few days caring for the queen and the young. After that, they move on to increasingly difficult tasks, from digging and working on the nest to foraging for food and defending the nest.

Most of these worker ants are female. Perhaps the ant colonies also depend on the volatile and nervous vision of women. However, there is also a place for men in the commune. The males act as drones and work with the queen to increase the population. That must mean that women are the fallen soldiers who go out to face the world every day and possibly perish in the path of duty.

The queen, at the beginning of a colony, has quite a few jobs, but as the colony grows her duties are delegated to others and she becomes the mother of the commune who simply lays eggs. Maternity must have a very respectful and almost divine throne, since the ants attach bodyguards to the queen and the bodyguards form a ring around her. That ring moves with her and expands or contracts depending on the situation.

The eggs, or the children of the ants, do not belong to the queen, but are a communal possession. As soon as the eggs are laid, she takes them to a separate room to be cared for by attendants or nurses. These ants, though not part of a separate caste, being vigorous and efficient, are in the prime of their lives, and their brood care, as observers attest, is meticulously and lovingly administered.

As soon as each young ant leaves the nursery, it acquires responsibility and is directed by the spirit of the community to a chosen occupation. The role of the young ant in life is not haphazard and directionless like the young of the human being.

If we pause and think, we can understand that illumination of ant colonies can be obtained from many angles, but the most important point is that all the ants in the colony act as a whole, making separation a strange concept. . Separation causes discord in the harmony of life, allowing the ego to hate or look down on others.