A World of Intelligent Ants
Have you ever wondered what the world would be like if ants were intelligent all of a sudden? If ants were sentient, their world and our world would be different in ways we can hardly conceive.
Picture a vast underground city that, rather than a chaotic jumble of tunnels, is a masterpiece. The roads would be clean and grid-lined, with neatly built houses made of compacted mud and special resin designed by ants. Imagine a stroll through the city’s bustling main road in the morning. The air would be alive with activity as traders set up their stalls in a thriving market selling a formidable array of goods. You’d not just have the usual, aged foraged leaves and bits of food, but delicate, cultured fungi and small, hand-baked breads infused with sugar. You’d have a working economy, with masters of every trade. Cooks, technicians, potters, and even artists who specialize in leaf cutting and forming decorations that would look good anywhere in the house. You’d have homes, schools, and hospitals in neat rows, all tended by an industrious staff who worked for the queen. This is no colony; this is a society, with structure and depth.
As their civilization grew, so would their culture. The plays they’d act out, the books they’d write using their own special chemicals, with each scent bearing a different meaning or phrase. They may have epic poems of the very moment that their first queen first met man, a moment that founded the great Ant Kingdom. We might be their first trading partners, a means of new material and knowledge. The ants with their precision would be ideal for working with intricate items, maybe there will be ant surgeons who reach the areas humans can’t with their size advantage. Humans can help with larger-scale projects, however. They could help ants with the expansion of their city using machinery. The ants’ entertainment could be the viewing of their history, an act of appreciation for their history, and their hopes of what’s to come, inspired by human traditions.
And how would they survive day to day? What would be their recreation? Would there be sports? Perhaps complex games of strategy played with pebbles or seeds? Would they create a written language, a more complex system of communication than pheromones? This degree of intelligence would also lead to invention. They may invent an entirely different kind of technology, one far different from our own, based on their environment and biology.
One thing is for sure, though: smart ants would make our world a very different place. to the presence of a new, highly structured, and advanced civilization making home under our feet.
