So I learned quite a bit from my aunts growing up. One of them taught me to play with matches, throw knives, make a bow and arrow and how to properly embellish a story. However, I have also learned a lot from ants. I grew up in Western Colorado and my house was surrounded by fields and they served as a massive battle ground for a variety of ant species. Kids in my neighborhood would battle ant colonies in buckets the way you might imagine an illegal dog fight would look like. There were black ants, fire ants, carver ants, army ants, and even bazooka ants.
Long story short, I spent many days studying ant behavior. I learned how ant colonies worked, how they migrated, and how ant colonies were related based on their spread pattern. I figured out how to find the queen, the drones, and the egg nests. I started to figure out what roles were at play and after following several ants for hours on end what seemed to drive their navigational instincts. What else was there to do wandering the fields all day? Ok, I’ll admit, I probably was not exhibiting typical behavior for a kid my age. I can however, use this little bit of credibility on ant behavior as the basis for this blog.
On several occasions, I would experiment with food sources on anthill behavior. I did not go so far as to record my observations in any scientific way but I would place a variety of food sources near ant hills and watch what happened. You can try this one. Pour a large amount of sugar next to an anthill in a giant mound (you do not need the sugar anyway). Observe for a long time. Some interesting things you might see.
First they will not attack it right away. Some ant species will, but not all. Sugar ants for example will completely ignore the mound for a long time. In fact some will go over and around it in order to achieve some other objective. The ants will continue normal operations until an ant with that particular scavenge pattern will discover a sugar particle and carry it back to the ant hill. He will signal chemically a successful find and other ants will begin to alter their pattern to accommodate the discovery. This will happen in a haphazard non systematic way. Slowly more and more ants will start to put work effort into moving the sugar, one grain at a time into a storage area underground.
This lesson or visualization demonstrated a few interesting concepts. First, an ant does not easily get disrupted from routine behavior. In fact even with a giant lifetime supply of sugar at hand, many ants will continue in a far reaching foraging pattern. It is an systemic knowledge that all food supplies are temporary and a constant finding effort must be deployed at all times, even when a bonanza has been discovered.
Second lesson is that the ant that finally recognizes the sugar particle, only deals with that particle. I have never seen an ant stop, look up at the giant mound in front of it and say, “holy bleep that is a lot of sugar, I need more resources.” Instead the ant grabs a particle and heads home signaling to others that something was found. That ant will continue, one particle at a time. The ant will start to be very consistent and systematic in the acquisition of that sugar. Soon others will join and start signaling too. That impossibly high sugar mountain will slowly erode until the stores are full or the hill is gone. An ant is a master of the concept of moving mountains. One little piece at a time.
The third thing we learn from this observation is not teamwork, that one is obvious. The ant will not over consume. They will start to settle into a harvesting pattern that is at first scattered and then frequent and consistent and as their stores fill will start to trickle into a smaller pattern. They are always harvesting but their levels will alter based on need.
Developing ant like behaviors of consistent patterns, working on large problems one small workload at a time and not over stressing our support systems is probably a worthwhile consideration. Little did my parents know that all that time I spent poking a stick at those anthills would one day serve as an inspiration to me.
So you have an unbelievably difficult thing to accomplish in front of you? Do what the ant does. Grabs what is immediately in front of them and gets to work!
Guy Reams
12 Days Left to 1st Marathon
