It is tempting to look for parallels with human empires. Perhaps it is impossible not to see rhymes between the natural and human worlds, and as a science journalist I’ve contributed more than my share. But just because words rhyme, it doesn’t mean their definitions align. Global ant societies are not simply echoes of human struggles for power. They are something new in the world, existing at a scale we can measure but struggle to grasp: there are roughly 200,000 times more ants on our planet than the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way.
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If anyone else have a hard time believing there are 2e16 ants on the planet, it’s based on this paper.
This hits on a lot of things I’ve been thinking about lately, thank you for posting it. I would love more stories about successful species and the way they see the world.
