Book review: Journey to the Ants

I sat a bit in silence wondering what could I write in this post in order to instill a sense of curiosity in you when it comes to ants.

The study of ants is called myrmecology and there are only 500 people on this Planet who do this as a job: studying ants. Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson wrote a fascinating book called Journey to the Ants. and I have found it to be a delightful different reading than what I am used to.

I will list a list of interesting facts about ants and I invite you afterward to check a short and a long review of this wonderful book.

• ants have lived on Earth for more than 10 million of their generations, while we humans have existed for no more than a hundred thousand human generations. They have been here way before us.

• if you think that in vitro fertilization is a super discovery in the medical world, you are mistaken. Ants have been doing this for millions of years. The ant queen has a spermotheca ( sperm bank) near the tip of her abdomen. At her first encounter with a male she collects the fluid and keeps it/releases it whenever she wants during her lifetime. So she basically only needs the male once because she can safely store the sperm for years.

• Harvard has the largest ant collection in the world

• ants move more soil than earth worms

• ants are the most aggressive and war like of all animals

-trehalose is the natural blood sugar of insects

-some ants have jaws that can cut through leather

Here is my short review of this book:

Here it is the long review of this book: