Mighty societies, miniature citizens

Even before I discovered feminism, I admired the way ant colonies were organized: Everybody answers to a queen. Some queens, however, are more like duchesses: They manage a mere hundred serfs and live in a haphazard castle. The queen of an Atta colony, however, rules from a palace. To make a typical Atta nest, worker ants must excavate about 40 tons of soil. Nor are Atta colonies staffed by a skeleton crew. In the course of a standard 10-year reign, an Atta queen can produce as many as 150 million daughters -- of which the vast majority are her slaves.

Worker ants are all female, and in situations where a clear queen is not evident, they are terrifyingly competitive. "The highest ranking individual," Wilson and Holldobler tell us, "is the most productive one. She also patrols the egg pile, frequently stopping to cannibalize eggs laid by subordinates."

That's not the only type of cannibalizing that goes on in ant communities. Sex can be unsavory and violent, particularly if you happen to be a male of the Diacomma species. After copulating with the queen, the male is assaulted by nest workers, which "bite off its head and thorax, while leaving the gaster attached." For reasons Wilson and Holldobler do not explain, the workers let this gaster -- or genital -- remain with the queen for a few days before throwing it out.

Ant cuisine also leaves something to be desired: "In the ant Pheidole spadonia, native to the southwestern United States," the authors observe, "workers cut prey into small fragments and place them into little hairy depressions near the mouth of larvae in a late stage of development. By secreting enzymes, presumably from the labial gland, onto the pieces and employing further mastication, the larvae dissolve the food into a liquid, or slurry, for distribution among other colony members."

Ants work extraordinarily well together, especially when transporting heavy objects. Teams of Eciton burchelli, the swarm-raiding army ants of South and Central America, can move bigger items as a group than they could if the burden were cut into pieces and each ant, working alone, attempted to carry a single part. "Once a prey is subdued," Wilson and Holldobler write, "some of the raiders cluster around and on top of it. The groups often include a large major that stands guard. A worker starts to drag the prey along, and a transport gang then quickly forms up to complete the transport back to the colony bivouac."