They war with other colonies, they drive out several termite species rendering them extinct- along with other ground dwelling insects. They are also racist.

  • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Actually the view of ants and bees as having monarchy is purely human projection. The Queen of an any colony is not it's ruler, the workers are. Queens are basically dragged around, force fed and treated more like an object than a part of the colony. If they step out of line they are stung to death and replaced.

  • AcidSmiley [she/her]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Ants actually have a completely decentralized system of organizing labor. Each worker forages and scouts autonomously until they find something interesting for the collective, after which they chemically mark the newly discovered ressource. Other ants then follow this trail, which automatically makes them form an organized group that distributes labor evenly to transport the ressource back to the nest. Likewise, all gathered food is shared collectively.

    The queen does zero organizational work and has no command over her workers, she just lays eggs to produce more workers. She's as much a part of the collective as any worker ant, only serving a different purpose due to her reproductive ability, and in fact larger colonies tend to have multiple queens in most species. Calling her a queen is anthropomorphizing the relation she has to the rest of the colony, which aren't her subjects, but her children or, in a multi-queen colony, her nieces.

    • Paulie [none/use name]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 months ago

      Ants keep invading my dog bowls and he doesn’t want to eat because an ant put its ass juice in his food

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    Ants aren't actually monarchists. The girls rule the roost, the queens don't actually exert control on them beyond identifying themselves as queen.

    That said, we are locked in battle with them for domination of the earth. It's really a four way fight between ants, rats, humans, and kudzu to rule over the mudball. Who will win? Who will rule over the ruins? Time alone will tell.

    • buckykat [none/use name]
      ·
      4 months ago

      I want to see ant nest uplifts as part of a pan-terran spaceship crew in some sf

      • Flyberius [comrade/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        Do the ant computers in the Children of Time series count (probably not)? I always found their enslavement to the spiders to be problematic and I hope it is addressed in a later book.

        There is Of Ants and Dinosaurs by Liu Cixin.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      4 months ago

      Aren't rats basically just a human parasite (though on the scale of societies and not individual humans)? Same as cockroaches neither of those species prosper out of the ordinary in the wild.

  • thelastaxolotl [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Ants are actually Settler KKKolonialists, its true

    Invasive ants are a diverse group of aggressive, competitive ant species that can rapidly establish and spread. Several ant species are amongst the most serious global invasive species. Their broad diets, nesting habits, ability to breed rapidly and adaptability to varied habitats make them excellent invaders. Agricultural, economic, environmental and social wellbeing are threatened by these ants, many of which have been introduced to, and established in, many countries

    anteaters are actually the true heroes of the proletariat anteater

  • dannoffs [he/him]
    ·
    4 months ago

    Ants are actually Posadists and have mostly achieved world communism:

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ant-supercolony-spans-tho/

    The ants invading your dog bowl are just reactionary holdouts.

  • Formerlyfarman [none/use name]
    ·
    4 months ago

    https://www.papertrell.com/apps/preview/The-Handy-Mythology-Answer-Book/Handy%20Answer%20book/What-is-the-Parade-of-Ants/001137032/content/SC/52cb000082fad14abfa5c2e0_default.html

  • wax_worm_futures [comrade/them]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 months ago

    We need to keep in mind how much of the scientific framing (and thus our understanding of the matter) is shaped by Anglo ideology.

    "Colony" and "queen" and "worker" are three such examples.