Go to the Ant you sluggard!

That was the KJV version of Proverbs 6:6 that I memorized untold decades ago. Perhaps the NLT version will sit better with you, “Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise!” They both make me laugh.

Picture if you will Charles Turner lying flat on the ground, his stomach pressed against the bare, brown earth. His eyes are just a few centimetres from a tiny hole in the ground, no bigger that a full stop. Ants came and went from the hole, fanning out in various directions in search of food.

How do they find their way home without getting lost? Charles wondered. Perhaps they smell their own footprints and thus find their way back to their nest. I’ll have to find out, he thought to himself.

For his experiment, Dr. Turner set up an artificial ant nest on his laboratory table. He then constructed a cardboard stage from which an inclined cardboard bridge led down to the ant nest. He transferred some ants and pupae(cocoons) from the nest to the stage above the nest. Immediately the ants began to carry the pupae back down to the nest, using his bridge. They came back up the same bridge to take more pupae.

Next, he made a second bridge and placed it on the opposite side of the stage. No ants used that bridge. Then he switched the bridges around so that the one with the smell of their footprints would be on the side they had been using. They ignored it and used the new bridge on the same side of the stage they had used before. Through a series of other experiments, he proved that they followed light, not smell, in finding their way back home.

Generally speaking, ants find their way visually by using landmarks and the position of the sun in the sky. Most types of ants stick close to the nest to find food and will utilize the same path over and over.

Further studies revealed that ants clean themselves often, combing and brushing one another. They also have a dump pile where they carry refuse matter. They even have a graveyard where they bury their dead. They go in funeral processions, two carrying a fallen ant, and two going behind to dig the grave.

Dr Turner learned that some ants grow gardens, and others keep aphids and milk them. The more he studied them, the more he was amazed at their industry and wisdom.

One question to finish with; do you know your way home? Not your earthly address, but your heavenly one.