Ants Or No Ants

That is the question.

We've got ants.
Again.
Ants on the floor.
Ants in the kitchen.
Ants running up our legs.

I imagine an ant saying, "How do I get this tasty human to hold still so we can get his butt back to the nest? We've got babies to feed."

As for us tasty people,
how do we get rid of the ants?
We use ant traps, of course.
Ants will take the poison bait back to the nest
and that'll finish 'em off.
When the ants are gone, the traps go in the garbage...until there are more ants.

There are always more ants.

Years ago a wise granddaughter told us we were being mean. We should put a jar of jam on the lawn so the ants would stay outside. She hadn't been around long enough to learn how we humans deal with stuff we don't like. Jam on the lawn doesn't work. If you feed the ants, they thrive and you get more ants looking for more food. Ants will happily bite the hand that feeds them.

We do that too. Come to think of it, we have a lot in common with the ants.

When they have exhausted the provision around their nest they send out an army to exploit surrounding territory. Just like us.

Sometimes ants send a swarm off to find somewhere else to call home. Just like us.

Some ants let aphids do the foraging for them and harvest aphid sugar secretions. Ice cream anyone?

These solutions to survival problems have evolved over millions of years along with everything else on the planet including us.

We have evolved smarter than ants, but not as smart as evolution. We are good at altering our circumstances but not so good at predicting outcomes, some of which may be bad. Eventually evolution fixes its mistakes. 

If we continue to exceed the regenerative capacity of the planet, that mistake will be fixed.

After that there will still be ants.

May we be wise enough soon enough to survive being so smart.
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The Abundance, Biomass, and Distribution of
Ants on Earth: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
Creation As Relative: Randy Woodley
Climate Science Awareness and Solutions: Columbia Climate School

Record Heat: The World, The Universe And Us, 23 minute video
The Failure Of Climate Politics: Prof Eliot Jacobson
I Need To Be Honest For A Moment: The Earthly
The Mouth Of The Ouroboros: a chronicle of civilization's suicide: Gabriel Lovemore