Ants – not humans – rule world, says study

In California, there is a supercolony of Argentine ants. Trillions-of-members strong, its territory stretches over 621 miles from San Francisco to the Mexican border. Humans, according to conventional wisdom, have used our unique intelligence to dominate the planet. But who is really in charge? There are 10 quadrillionOne quadrillion is one followed by fifteen zeroes.  ants on the planet, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica. They make up between 15% and 20% of the planet's total animal biomassThe total weight of a set of organisms (although the word is also used to describe a kind of energy production in which plant and animal remains are used as fuel). on land. For biologist Dr Mark Moffet, ant society "represents a pinnacle of social evolution". He says it has taken humans over 30,000 years to reach a state of sophistication that ants achieved around 50 million years ago. In ant colonies, you find complex transport networks, ventilation, childcare systems and waste collection. Each ant has an assigned role. Today, the way human societies operate is far closer to ants than bonobos or chimpanzees (our closest evolutionary relatives). The reason is in our numbers. While most animals live in groups of a few hundred at most, only humans and a few social insects, like ants, have populations that can boom into the millions. Humanity's big leap came 11,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture. Ants got there first. Leaf cutter ants gather vegetation and cultivate it into edible fungus. Ant colonies even rear livestock, "milking" tiny insects called aphidsA type of tiny insect that lives by sucking the sap from plants. A common example is the greenfly. by stroking their abdomens. If an ant colony moves home, members will pick up their aphids to take with them. But the resemblance is nowhere clearer than in warfare. Along the Argentine ants' Californian border, millions die each week in all-out wars as brutal and futile as anything in World War One. "The front lines shift glacially, month after month, a few metres one way, then the other," says Moffett. Ant armies employ complex troop movements and deceptive tactics. Injured ants are carried out of the fray by their comrades. Captured enemy ants are transported back to the colony to act as slave labour. What can ants tell us about ourselves? We both build sophisticated societies. While ants are driven by pheromonesChemical substances (such as scents) produced by animals to serve as signals to other members of their species. and genetic programming, we act from intelligence and education. But isn't it all just social conditioning? Are we just ants with delusions of grandeur? And is this all proof that large, complex societies can only ever be hostile and violent? But ant societies are so aggressive because as colonies grow, the extra ants (the reserve workforce) mostly become soldiers. Humans, however, have the unique power of creativity and imagination. Rather than war, we can direct our spare efforts into science, architecture, art, literature. We can overcome our "ant nature". Q & A What do we know?Ants are some of the strongest creatures on Earth, carrying up to 50 times their own body weight. They can also run 80 times the length of their body in a minute. This is the equivalent of a six-foot-tall man running 1.5 kilometres in just 60 seconds. What do we not know? The individual intelligence of ants. Previously, many scientists credited the amazing abilities of ant colonies to group, rather than individual, intelligence. But despite their tiny brains, there is a growing body of evidence that individual insects, like ants, termites and bees, can indeed be very intelligent. Studies show ants can learn new information quickly and change their behaviour based on it.KeywordsQuadrillion - One quadrillion is one followed by fifteen zeroes.