Ant

In our cultural mythology, ants are considered “community minded” and “patient” and “disciplined” builders of their miniaturised, yet vast, highly “militarised” societies.

Isn’t it marvellous that such tiny creatures could be such good role models for us “advanced” humans?

Being sick last week I had some time to read up on ants and follow them around the still green lemons in the atrium.

I’m sure all of us have seen ants moving along a line on the kitchen counter and have observed their antennal communications. What the occasional observer might not see is that, along with “touch”, what is more crucial to the ants’ organised behaviour is “smell”.

Depending upon the species, ants produce ten or twenty different pheromones to signal specific requests and warnings, passing them through physical contact or leaving them behind as chemical trails.

Aside from the numeric information that ant species number over 11,000 and their combined weight equals over half the weight of all insect species (total of 750,000; mostly beetles), it is the ants’ etymology of their entomology that most fascinates me.

Take their phylum, “Arthropoda” . Most of us would look at this and our minds will either go blank or some fearful image of a third grade teacher will bring a sense of dread or panic flooding back into consciousness.

However, we all know the word “arthritis” and know that it deals with “joints” (if somewhat swollen or inflamed). We, also, might know that podium, pedestal, pedestrian and podiatrist have something to do with feet. Therefore, ants belong to the phylum that simply means “jointed feet”; a phylum comprising classes of Insects, Spiders, Crustacca and Myriapoda.

The class of Insects has various orders, one of which is Hymenoptera. This contains ants, as well as their evolutionary cousins, the bees and wasps. The key to understanding why ants are included with bees is found in the breakdown of Hymenoptera. Every teenage boy knows that a Pterodactyl is a “winged” creature from the age of the dinosaurs. This same boy might also have discussed “hymens” with his class mates during lunch time with giggles of assured adult knowledge. “Hymen” is Latin for membrane. “Pter-” is Greek for wing or feather.

Hymenoptera is simply a membranous wing; something every queen ant has.

Within the order Hymenoptera, one family — Formicidae — contains all the true ants. The form of the ants is easy to recognise as compared with many other insects as all are the same basic shape and have a characteristic kink in their ever busy antennae.

Of interest here is that “form” in Latin means shape and beauty. It also means “ant”.

A person who studies ants, however, is not a formicologist; rather, a myrmecologist, from the Greek “myrmeco-” for ant.

Lastly, and of great interest is that to “formicate” (as opposed to fornicate) is to crawl like ants and to swarm with moving beings. Just possibly, group sex could be associated with new meaning.