JOURNEY TO THE ANTS; A Story of Scientific Exploration

     I read this book translated in Korean at twelve years old. When I was younger, I had read a book, Ants, which was written by Bernard Werber. This book is a long novel, told about ants' life and their adventure. I was completely attracted at this story. Since I read this novel entirely, I have become to be absorbed about ants' behavior and their life style.

    After I was interested in ants, I wanted to know passionately the scientific informations which deal with ants' life, behavior, construction of their nest and all about them. So I started looking for some books in libraries. Finally, I could contact with this book, Journey to the ants. I immediately borrowed it.

Book cover

     While I first read this book, I felt wholly excited. Because this book has many informations related to ants. This book deals with lots of scientific things about ants. The contents of this book are divided in 18 chapters, at the same time, can be separated in 4 parts according to the outline of the story; First, authors, Edward O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler, tell the story about their childhood and the motivation to study ants. Second, the book deals with scientific informations such as ants' life cycle, construction of their colony, ants' caste which divied ants' class anatomically and ethologically, unique ant species, their cooperation and conflict, dominance, the method of communicating and etc. Third, authors explain about how ants can control the nature. They compare what they are saying in their book with some mistakes which the human has been doing. At last part of the book, writers teach some methods which we can study ants and raise live ants' colony easily. Especially, they are also telling about the material and device making specimen of ants.


     In the first part of the book, the part of telling about authors childhood, I quite agreed with their enthusiasm. I was affected to decide my future goal by reading the story about their growth period. In particular Wilson and his animal-liked friend's story remind me of collecting activities with my friend.

     Holldobler saw that ants carried fast their cocoons and larvae to be safe their nest after his father turned the rock which the ants had lived under. He was interested in this situation, and he gathered live colonies and studied them in artificial nests, learning the local species, drwing their distinctive anatomical traits, and observing their behavior. All the while his enthusiasms bubbled over. At last, he became an entomologist when he graduated curriculum of the university.


     Another author Edward O. Wilson, an honorary professor in Harvard university, is my idol. He lived in Miami, United states of America, filled with most various species of plants and animals. As he was young, he liked to fish. One day, he was looking for pin-fish, who has some sharp spine in their body, for catching a stingray. However, when he pull up his fishing rod, he was caused an accident that he was struck his left eye by a pin-fish's sharp spine. For this accident, he could just see the two-dimension because of his one eye, he was gradually attracted by insects living the upside of earth like ants. At the same time, Wilson could contact with diverse species of ants and he kept, collected ants for rasing and observing.

              Edward O.Wilson(Left pic.) and Bert Holldobler(Right pic.)



      In second part, dealing with scientific informations, my most interested part is 'The origin of cooperation'. In this part we can learn the origin of ants' cooperation. Authors explain how ants live together for using genetic research. Previous scientist thought that the weakness ants didn't have vritical weapons which can threaten their natural enemies, they could be hunted easily. So they were gathering members to protect themselves, and it becomes the origin of cooperation.

     However, this theory was disused in 1980s. Because of the trend of researching genes in 1960s, scientists could know many epochal informations and applied in various parts of science. In this part, Wilson and Holldobler explain the beginning of ant societies' cooperation to refer to genetic factor. The species which are belonging to Hyneonptera have a unique genetic trait known as haploid. Because of this feature, each gene-closed ants could live together. When I first contacted this theory, I was wholly attracted. How perfect it is! If I could not see this book, I would never consider such as this fact.

A queen Polyergus breviceps with a host Formica argentea worker.

      Except for mentioning contents, this book has many interesting informations and pictures. In the part of 'Social Parasites',  we can see the most strangest ants' picture and learn about their biological features, ethological traits. Ants is one of the most successful insects. So another species of insects try to be a parasites on an ants colony. But what I concerned is polyergus which is genus of ant to be parasite other formica's colony. This ants have some distinctive anatomical features such as a pair of jaws which are sickle. Using this jaws they can easily hunted other ants colonies' pupae. After hatching out hunted pupa, this worker serve for polyergus colony permanently.One of the species of polyergus, Polyergus samurai, live in the Japanese Island, the continent of China and the Korean Peninsula. As I saw this ants in my eyes, imagine this situation! Polyergus walked fast to their hunted ant nest, and some of hem returned to their nest carrying slaves' pupae.

      I could learn about ants from reading this book. It led me to be intented on biology. After I read it, I collected and studied ants actively. I followed the methods explaining to make specimens of ant and raised alive ant colonies. Observing and studying an alive ant colony made me happy. At now, I want to be an entomologist. Exclusive of scientific informations, It is consturcted authors' passion and I can feel the biologists' life. I strongly recommed you to read this book, if you concern for ants. It can be a starting point which make you be a biologist!

  


August 28th, 2010
wirtten by 21205 Kim jae hyeon.