Ants have always fascinated me.
Not because they are very small or look very different or come in various shapes and forms. My primary reason for fascination is that they are very unlike humans. Their collective behaviour sets them apart from us. Various ant species exhibit behaviour that exemplify the survival of collectives over the survival of individuals.
Because let’s be honest: the world is brutal for ants. They face attacks from many predators, and are at threat from other ants.
Take Colobopsis explodens, ants that turn their own body into a weapon. Before danger gets too close to its nests, the tiny worker ants detonate their back pouches and coat their enemies in a yellow, sticky, deadly fluid.
Last year, researchers found that in some ant species, ill ant pupae signal their sickness to the colony, and consequently, other worker ants come and eliminate them, thus protecting the rest of the brood and the colony from an infectious spread. While this act of “self-sacrifice” can be thought of as selflessness, purely from the genetic terms, it is acutely selfish — the other pupae are genetically close cousins of the sacrificial pupae, so saving them preserves close genetic copies. However, queen ants, which have strong immune systems, do not sacrifice themselves. In the world of ants, the distinction between individuals and societies blur.
Take another example — that of Messor ibericus — colonies of which contain male worker ants from another species — Messor structor, which are genetically distinct and far-off cousins often residing in distinct geographical areas. Scientists have found that such colonies persist without any cross-breeding with Messor structor ants, and the mechanism holds no biological equivalent: the queen ants Messor ibericus produce offspring of both species by cloning male Messor structor worker ants with which it mates, and suppressing its own genes from its nucleus to produce more male Messor structor ants. If it hadn’t suppressed its genes, the mating would result in hybrid male worker ants. The queen mating with male Messor ibericus ants can produce only queen Messor ibericus ants, an unsustainable genetic result from the colonies’ perspective.
While the story of ants can be explained from the survival lens, is preservation of genes a good enough explanation in this case? To survive as a collective, Messor ibericus clones and reproduces cousin Messor structor ants. Another way of looking at this unique phenomenon is: the cloned male Messor structor ants in these colonies are domesticated and unable to mix with the wild cousins with which they share their genetic lineage.
Whichever way you interpret it, the behaviour of ants as collectives — even if you explain them away with DNAs, genes, and the like — is different from ours. A mix of individualism (of the queen ants) and groupism (collective behaviour whose lines blur) suggest a structure or organisation that transcends our understanding (at least, for now). Unlike in physics, where light and matter take the shortest possible paths between origin and destination (sometimes, the longest!), ants often travel in trajectories that maximise survival and access to energy.
Human behaviour is strikingly different. We — of the same species — seem to care less about our collective survival. Maybe we have a lesson or two to learn from ants and pests?
Debdutta Paul 