Many years ago, a wise observer bent his gaze upon the lowly ant, and took notice of its incessant, purposeful activity. He then wrote for posterity this sage advice: “Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider her ways, and be wise; which having no chief, overseer, or ruler, provides her bread in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest.” (Proverbs 6:6-8)
He wrote, of course, of the ants which he was familiar with in the Middle East. Later observations have shown that there are some 8,000 varieties of ants in the world. Some are large (up to an inch long), others small; some carry potent stingers in their tails, others do not; many live in nests, but some do not.
The Army Ants of Africa, for example, spend their entire existence on the march, moving in large columns which feed chiefly on insects which they have overrun. The and army rests periodically, while its queen lays her eggs, and these are then carried along when the march is resumed.
A number of types of ants are dubbed “honey ants,” from their habit of eating “honey-dew,” a sweet secretion of aphids. The ants actually “milk” the aphids, by gently stroking their abdomens with their antennae.
So close is the association of the Corn Root Aphid and Corn Field Ant that this species of aphid is almost totally dependent upon its ant “masters.” The ants take care of the aphids just as a farmer cares for his cows. Each autumn the ants collect aphid eggs, which they maintain over-winter in the their underground nests. In the spring the young aphids are moved to the roots of early weeds and grasses, which are the first “feeding grounds” available. Then after the corn fields are panted and sprouted, the farmer ants move their charges to their favorite food source, the roots of the corn plant. It has bee learned that the Corn Root Aphid is nearly helpless at finding its preferred food source without help from the ants.
But perhaps the most interesting ant livelihood is that of certain species of ants called “leaf-cutter ants.” The ants do not eat the bits of leaves which they drag down into their nests, but instead chew them into pulp and use them as garden material on which fungus grows. It is the fungus which the ants eat.
At least one species of leaf-cutter ant also “fertilizes” the leaf pulp with ant manure, and transplants fungus “starts” from an old garden – and then “weeds” the garden by making sure no other fungus creeps in. The entire ant colony lives on the fungus thus grown.
But how, we ask, do the ants know to do these things? How is it possible that ants “learned” to make gardens out of chewed leaves? And how do they understand that fertilizing their garden produces larger crops? Who taught them the art of transplanting? How did the Corn Field Ant become a livestock raiser?
A moment’s thought will show that the fungus-easting ants, for example, could never have survived while they laboriously learned how to cultivate their food little by little. Farmer ants and aphid-raising ants, and Army ants, and nest-building and non-nest-building ants of every description: all do what they do by instinct. They do as their kind has always done, through instinctive wisdom implanted in them by Someone greater than themselves.
We are pointed to a Master-Intelligence, capable of creating each form of life with its own intricate life processes – often intermeshed with those of other life-forms. Obviously, this is Someone far greater than man.
In the Bible, God asked Job: “Who has set the wild donkey free? Or who has loosened the bonds of the swift donkey… The wings of the ostrich wave proudly; but… she leaves her eggs on the earth, warms them in the dust, and forgets that the foot may crush them, or that the wild animal may trample them… Though her labor is in vain, she is without fear, because God has deprived her of wisdom, neither has he imparted to her understanding.” (Job 39:5, 13-17)
Truly, the more closely we delve into nature’s secrets, the more surely we can see God’s handiwork! The stamp of His creation is unmistakable, if we will but open our eyes.
(All Scripture is quoted from the World English Bible translation.)