Who Cares About Ants?

Science fiction writers often take the position of an alien from outer space looking down upon a street crowded with people. “What are those strange creatures? What are they doing? And as the alien observes, it sees many creatures coming out of openings in the buildings going in different directions. Many going in the same directions, and many others going in an opposite way. Exchanging places, if the alien has such a concept. Regardless whether the movement makes sense, the creatures appear to be doing something. They have energy. They are busy. Do they have a purpose? If they were like a river, the water appears to be obstructed by rapids because they do not flow in the same direction as water would. Are they going on their own incentive? Is something someone driving them? Or directing them?
Before you know it, the Sci Fi writer is favorably comparing the energetic creatures on the busy street to an ant society where the individuals appear to be orderly about their actions. The comparison is misleading. Ants do not act on the direction of a leader – theirs is a group behavior stereotyped and determined by innate mechanisms. They have no capacity for learning, and lack the ability to develop a social tradition based on accumulated experience. They are doing what evolution designed in them millions of years past.
One ant taken out of their society will die. In a colony there is no such creature as a single individual. Even if two ants are taken together out of the colony they cannot take action. They need the colony to direct them. Not at all like humans. Take a human out of society and he/she will survive and find a place, not necessarily completely alone, but each will make their own place, their own way, searching for food, creating protection, avoiding danger. They will create their own society, for humans are social animals and adapt to group behavior.
Sociologists study groups and the animals that gather in those groups. They find that individuals act quite different from what they would when alone or in pairs. So it is not surprising that an individual finds himself/herself acting in ways by conforming to the group that actually may be in conflict with their desires if they were acting on their own. Many times they will not stand firm on their own standards. However when one does stand against the crowd the individual discovers there are others who feel the same, that individual changes the society. So it is that one individual can change the world.
In many ways human society differs from ant colonies. And I am happy for it.
Naomi Sherer