Consider the Ant

If you’ve ever sat on the toilet in an old or neglected bathroom (and, if you live in Denton, you likely have one in your home), you’ve probably noticed the lone ants spinning their dizzy, stupid little trails across the tile or grime. There are also favorable odds that you’ve seen a line of the same sort of ants, taut and economical, stretching from the crack behind the sink to the snack you or someone else accidentally brought and accidentally left last week.

Ants can, at “will,” release a chemical trail which can be followed by other ants; this is how they manage these lines. They will, upon being presented this trail, follow it precisely. If the trail wavers, each and every ant along that line will make the half-inch detour without ever looking (smelling) up to notice the perpetual stumble and smooth the parade’s route. If the trail suddenly ends, an ant will turn around and follow the trail back like an electric train set.

I would like to think that a wall of grungy pink tile is immense to an ant the way the Dakota badlands are to me. Far as can be seen: nothin’. So scouting ants run in circles and down the same caulked gutters many times before (if) they find something edible. How do they find their way back to the nest? I would think that they would leave their pheromone trails from the first step out the anthill, path of breadcrumbs or Theseus’ string through the Labyrinth. It would make for a tedious and wasteful hike back, but at least our Hero Scout wouldn’t find food for his beloved queen only to wander and starve like a Jew in the desert.

That exploratory route is always so knotted, but the ants marching one-by-one bullet to the food source with German efficiency (for further analogy, relate this phrase to the Wandering Jew metaphor above, read a history book). Try as I can, I never remain on the shitter long enough to find out exactly what happens in the time between the Maiden Expedition and the subsequent arrival of the scientific exploitation team.

However, we can do some descriptive experimentation. Try taking a sponge to an inch-long section of invisible ant path. The arriving ants will turn tail back to the nest; more ants will still bubble out from the top and repeat these steps. Maybe the very same ants. The ants bringing food will also about-face at the sponged-out barrier and trot the length of line back and forth until – I’m unsure, because I’ve never stuck around long enough to find out. Twenty minutes.

Back in the nineteen fifties, a popular brand of crayon had a chemical in it that was extremely similar to the ant pheromone; so similar that ants would follow it. Nobel-Prize winning physicist Richard P. Feynman would draw patterns and pictures and marvel at his living artwork (See Ralph Leyton's "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" W.W. Norton & Co., 1997). Other than the marveling, not much was accomplished by these activities. He was not then a physicist, but a curious child. What I wouldn’t give for a box of those crayons.

It’s these sorts of experiments which lead me to believe that these sorts of experiments are kosher to perform on ants. I have no remorse for squishing ants (or other hive creatures – termites, wasps, etc.) because an individual ant has consciousness equivalent to a fingernail. I have enormous respect for the Hive as an entity – but if its fingernails are out to bite me and infest my shithouse, I am arrogant enough to clip the nails at the risk of removing a finger. Remove the finger. Squash the fucker.

Ants are not like lobsters or beetles or coral. These are things which exhibit a capacity to suffer. If placed in a constrained environment, these beings will fight and consume one another. Ants, when among other ants, will not react in high-pressure situations. Some levels up the consciousness-hierarchy we have pigs, which will, when forced to stand in densely-populated areas for long periods of time, chew off their neighbors’ tails out of what seems to me to be pure psychological boredom.

This last trait is something you and I are capable of experiencing, and examples can be found right now, as this has become quite long and my bottom’s numb. Good day, happy shittings.