Ants of all kinds (there are many thousands of species) are remarkable insects in their organized way of life and cooperation with one another. Solomon, who wrote the above Bible verse, could not have used a better example of wisdom in action.
Ants’ tiny brains contain up to 250,000 nerve endings. While this is many fewer than humans, it is actually more for their size than we have. Ants communicate in various ways and God-given instincts enable them to do things together in ways that seem almost impossible to us.
Weaver ants, which live in Africa, Australia and Asia, are one amazing example of this. These little ants, about the size of a grain of rice, make nests from leaves that are still attached to the trees, in the tops of trees. When choosing a new nest location, they first have worker ants decide if the leaves have the right bending ability and distance from each other. Once this is decided, they get to work. They will glue leaves together to make a new home. Often a chosen leaf is impossible for one ant to reach as it stands on another leaf. To solve this problem, they form living chains. One ant acts as an anchor on the top leaf; then others, one by one, hold on with their legs around the middle of the last one in line, making the chain a little longer. This continues as far as necessary, until the chosen leaf is reached. Then the workers pull the leaves together. This requires some amazing teamwork!
But how do they make the leaves hold together? Some ants keep holding the leaves together along the edges while others return to an old nest. There each worker ant picks up a larva (an ant not yet fully formed) and carries it to the new location. Each larva is held in the jaws of a worker and gently tapped on the head with the worker ant’s antennae. This causes it to produce a continuous, sticky, silk thread. While producing this thread, each larva is taken along the leaf edges being held by the other ants, and its silk thread connects the two leaves. This goes on until the whole new nest is woven together. Then the worker ants carry the larvae inside to continue using them to construct rooms inside the nest. The nests can vary in size from just one leaf folded and glued together to the size of a volleyball or even larger.
In this kind of ant colony, even the not-yet-developed babies have an important job to do which helps the colony. We are told to consider (think about) the ants and to be wise. Even if you are very young, you can do your work with a willing heart, for the Lord Jesus.
(to be continued)
Did You Know?
Ants’ tiny brains contain up to 250,000 nerve endings.
Messages of God’s Love 7/14/2024