The Ants Go Marching

Video Version Here

One day last week, while I was sitting on my front patio, I caught some slight movement out of the corner of my eye. Turning my head, I saw what looked like a bit of dead leaf moving slowly across the ground, floating just above the surface. Looking more closely, I could see that ants seemed to be transporting this bit of leaf. Then I got on my hands and knees for an even closer look. Yes, about twelve ants were moving a small piece of a dead leaf across my patio, and there were other lone ants dashing about in front and behind the team. I watched as the ants and their leaf made their way to the edge of the patio.

At the edge of my patio is an electric cord. How were the ants going to maneuver their treasure over this obstacle? They first tried going over it directly, but they couldn’t seem to get traction on the slick black cylindrical cord. They traveled down the length of cord a bit and tried to go under it, but that didn’t work either. At a spot a little further down, there seemed to be a rise in the patio. The ants had their opportunity, and as a team, got their prize over the cord.

I was intrigued. Where were they going? What were they going to do with this treasure? I didn’t see any ant mounds looming in their sights, so I continued to study them as they made their way over and under the leaf litter between the clumps of miniature monkey grass that is my lawn. Eventually I lost them. I never figured out to where they were carrying their prize.

I took a video of this ant rodeo and studied it. It’s hard to tell because their movements are so quick and seemingly chaotic, but it looked to me as if the peripheral ants would come up to the leaf bit and skitter away again, or else, grab hold of it, and another ant might let go of his section. Again, it was really hard to see this in real time.

Those of you reading this who are close to my age may remember the SRA boxes of reading cards in elementary school. This was a way for kids to read at the skill level they tested into, score themselves, and advance forward as their reading skills improved. For some reason, the only content I remember was from fifth grade. I read that ants were the strongest animals on the planet. This blew my ten year old brain! It made absolutely no sense, and I may have even complained to my teacher that SRA was wrong. I remember telling my mother about this glaring misinformation they were teaching us. She patiently explained that relative to their size, ants are capable or carrying items much heavier than other animals. So l learned about ratios that day, as well as cool information about ants.

But I have never heard of ants cooperating to transport an unwieldy piece of leaf on the level that I witnessed on my patio.

Sure enough, ants will work together to move an object that they want. Ants don’t have hands and fingers, so they grab the object with their mouths and pull in the direction they want to go. The seemingly random ants are actually sniffing and scouting the location of the final destination. One of these then grasps the object and pulls harder than the rest of the ants to more effectively move the object towards what they have sensed to be the goal.

What a powerful metaphor for providing care, or even just for living. When there is a substantial goal that needs to be achieved, we need a team to help us with the heavy lifting. We can’t do it alone. And when we are in there working hard, heads down, moving forward, we may lose sight of that goal. We need scouts to look at the situation with new eyes and a fresh take, then be strong enough to guide us, and our team, toward the goal.

I still can’t figure out what my ants wanted with this piece of leaf, but I certainly am grateful to them for their lesson in teamwork and tenacity, and in their ability to seamlessly shift leadership to individuals who had a fresh perspective.