Author Description

With numerous black-and-white images and eight pages of color plates, The Lives of Ants provides a state-of-the-art look at what we now know about these fascinating creatures, portraying a world that is rich and full of surprises, and still full of unsolved mysteries. The authors illuminate the world of the ant, shedding light on such topics as the ant's impressive abilities in direction finding and quite amazing ingenuity when it comes to building their nests, finding supplies, or exploiting other members of the animal kingdom. They show, too, that they are capable of aggression and violence, which can embroil entire colonies in fratricidal or matricidal war. Readers also discover that ants are walking bundles of secretory glands (they have about forty of them), which enable them to emit from ten to twenty different pheromones, each of which has its own "meaning." In addition, ants can emit sound signals, made of a high-pitched squeak, and they can even dance, though not as intricately or as well as bees.