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The Ants
This landmark work, the distillation of a lifetime of research by the world's leading myrmecologists, is a thoroughgoing survey of one of the largest and most diverse groups of animals on the planet. Hölldobler and Wilson review in exhaustive detail virtually all topics in the anatomy, physiology, social organization, ecology, and natural history of the ants.
In large format, with almost a thousand line drawings, photographs, and paintings, it is one of the most visually rich and all-encompassing views of any group of organisms on earth. It will be welcomed both as an introduction to the subject and as an encyclopedia reference for researchers in entomology, ecology, and sociobiology.
In large format, with almost a thousand line drawings, photographs, and paintings, it is one of the most visually rich and all-encompassing views of any group of organisms on earth. It will be welcomed both as an introduction to the subject and as an encyclopedia reference for researchers in entomology, ecology, and sociobiology.
745 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 1990
About the author
Bert Hölldobler
17 books78 followersBert Hölldobler is Foundation Professor at Arizona State University and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. He lives in Arizona and Germany.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
July 20, 2021
With all the pictures and concentrated knowledge, the antiliation of the reader can begin and I must confess, I might be biased because I am a bit of a myrmecological fanboy.
Eusociality in insects is, the great to terrifying, trait of organizing huge states without individuality, rudimentary intelligence of single insects and many not understood ways of automating and perfecting each process from war to logistics and breeding. It comes closer to a fully automated system, a machine, a bio-digital fusion of perfection than to a living organism.
The similarities to human societies, especially to totalitarian dictatorships, are so immense that it seems to be a nice philosophical mind game to think of what combinations and differences may arise from more anty humans and more social ants.
I am looking forward to seeing those many open questions solved, new species discovered, the knowledge, wisdom and high organization of ants used for algorithms except for swarm algorithms for automated warfare and in general for more interest in nature, just great books like this one can strengthen.
Reading Hölldobler's other anty books about leafcutter ants and superorganisms is highly recommended if you are in that kind of superstructures and supercolonies building, fascinating animals. It takes time, it´s highly specific, some skimming and scanning won´t be a bad idea, but it´s totally worth it.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_H%...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusocia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline...
Eusociality in insects is, the great to terrifying, trait of organizing huge states without individuality, rudimentary intelligence of single insects and many not understood ways of automating and perfecting each process from war to logistics and breeding. It comes closer to a fully automated system, a machine, a bio-digital fusion of perfection than to a living organism.
The similarities to human societies, especially to totalitarian dictatorships, are so immense that it seems to be a nice philosophical mind game to think of what combinations and differences may arise from more anty humans and more social ants.
I am looking forward to seeing those many open questions solved, new species discovered, the knowledge, wisdom and high organization of ants used for algorithms except for swarm algorithms for automated warfare and in general for more interest in nature, just great books like this one can strengthen.
Reading Hölldobler's other anty books about leafcutter ants and superorganisms is highly recommended if you are in that kind of superstructures and supercolonies building, fascinating animals. It takes time, it´s highly specific, some skimming and scanning won´t be a bad idea, but it´s totally worth it.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_H%...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusocia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline...
September 14, 2008
If you only read one book on ants this year. Make it this one.
January 31, 2008
My ex-boyfriend stole this book for me. I would stay up late at night and look at the pictures and try to learn all the funny words. To say the least, his book became my bible. Recently I opened it and noticed the dedication: "To the next generation of myrmecologists." This still makes me cry.
March 11, 2009
The photographs clearly represent a labor of love for the entomologists who collaborated on this book. You will fall in love too. Who knew ants could be so fascinating?
June 1, 2007
You all made fun of me for buying and reading this. But look who knows more about ants than you do now!
Want to Read
January 8, 2012Everything you ever wanted to know about ants...
For instance, how do ants find their way around?
....they wanted to see if ants used the sky to find their way around, so they took pictures of the sky, blew them up into big portraits, put them above ant nests so that they blocked out the real sky, but oriented them slightly differently...and kept track of how the ants got all mixed up.
Ever wonder what an ant nest looks like inside?
....they found one, and poured quick dry cement into it. Then let it dry, washed away all the dirt, and were left with a sculpture in cement of the inside of a nest.
(Everything you ever wanted to know about ants...)
For instance, how do ants find their way around?
....they wanted to see if ants used the sky to find their way around, so they took pictures of the sky, blew them up into big portraits, put them above ant nests so that they blocked out the real sky, but oriented them slightly differently...and kept track of how the ants got all mixed up.
Ever wonder what an ant nest looks like inside?
....they found one, and poured quick dry cement into it. Then let it dry, washed away all the dirt, and were left with a sculpture in cement of the inside of a nest.
(Everything you ever wanted to know about ants...)
October 29, 2023
This book is a summation of All Ant Research Ever. It took me 18 months and 4 library loans to read this Pulitzer winner, but it was so very worth it. Wilson explains every aspect of ant biology and social structure. What I learned applies to humans as well, sometimes depressingly so: among other things, how castes are created through inflicting micro-aggressions and withholding resources—just like people do (!) The most fascinating species to me are the ants who tend fungi gardens inside the colony.
Just be aware that this is a textbook, way more academic than Wilson’s more general nature writing. You must be willing to sift through many tables and a few chemical models, but you will be enchanted by the complexities in this tiny world.
Just be aware that this is a textbook, way more academic than Wilson’s more general nature writing. You must be willing to sift through many tables and a few chemical models, but you will be enchanted by the complexities in this tiny world.
December 21, 2009
This is one of the most amazing books I have read. I am intimidated by ants and thus have a huge hunger for information about them - and this book delivers!
Fantastic photography and the most high-level expertise imaginable. An absolute coffee-table topper.
I just wish I could afford a copy.
Fantastic photography and the most high-level expertise imaginable. An absolute coffee-table topper.
I just wish I could afford a copy.
December 10, 2013
This book is an astonishing reference and a monumental achievement. Anyone interested in social insects simply must have this, and The Insect Societies. I have been reading and re-reading it for 10 years. It is brilliant and peerless.
August 17, 2022
I couldn’t actually finish this book. It’s just so detailed! It really approaches encyclopedia level. But I have to give it 5 stars because it’s clearly such a labor of love and a monument to decades of research, and the information is laid out clearly, and concisely believe it or not. It just happens that there are a lot of things to say about ants. Now I can’t look at one without seeing a whole world within its tiny body.
March 13, 2016
This is an exhaustive look at ants. It is impressive in its comprehensiveness and its obvious enthusiasm for its subject. However, for the everyday reader hoping to learn about ants, it is a bit too much. I would have been much happier with something a bit less exhaustive and I probably would have retained a bit more information from something that wasn't striving to be so detailed. It's impressive but a bit too much.
March 4, 2009
I think this book will permanently live on my coffee table, because it is way too big to read straight through, but perfect to peruse on occasion. Fun (and physically large enough) to share with a friend.
Read
September 5, 2011OK so this book is physically huge and is an index of a TON of discovered ants. I'm giving it a five star rating even tho I know I'll never read it cover to cover. Just to have it and be able to refer to it is enuf for me!
January 16, 2010
There is a lot of information about ants in this book. Maybe more than I require.
May 4, 2012
One of my Desert Island Books. I'd spend all my time becoming a self-taught myrmecologist!
June 20, 2017
My parents got me huge heavy book when I was in junior/middle school! It was all technical to me, but I love ants so I cared not. :)
December 29, 2021
totally transformative, one of the best science books I have ever read
February 2, 2021
This is the best science book ever published !! If you can buy it, do it, I even have two copies !!!
December 27, 2025
This is the only science textbook to win a Pulitzer!
Ants are only ~20% of human biomass, not 100% as the book claims, but that's 2.5m ants per human!
Sterile ants, which are all female, help the queen reproduce instead of having their own kids.
- Ants, bees, wasps, etc. are haplodiploid, i.e. females have father + mother genes, males develop from unfertilized eggs (only mother genes).
- So, sisters share 75% of genes, more than 50% with their own kids. Helping mothers make sisters is better than having kids!
- (And if this isn't an alien civilization, what is? We don't need sci-fi. Nature is weirder than fiction.)
But their math doesn't hold up!
- If the queen produces 50% brothers (with 25% common genes) and 50% sisters (75% common genes), the average is 50% common genes, same as having kids.
- But building a nest is hard, specialization is efficient, etc. So ants stay sterile and help the colony.
- BTW, this gene math only works if the queen is 100% monogamous - so they are, or at least, were, until evolution locked it in.
- (Making nature one-step less alien. But still weird.)
Epigenetics determines caste. More food or specific food (e.g. royal jelly in bees) changes gene expression of the same DNA.
- When a queen dies, some ants (e.g. Indian jumping ants) can reprogram a worker ant into a queen through diet!
Leafcutter ants have been "farming" for 50 million years. Rather, are part of an agricultural symbiosis.
- They cut leaves and feed it to a fungus they cultivate in their nests.
- They protect the fungus from pests using antibiotics produced by bacteria living on their bodies. They clear decay and weeds.
- They can't live without the fungus because it produces a nutrient (Arginine) that they need but can no longer make themselves.
Ants communicate using pheromones, touch, and sound.
- Pheromones can communicate species, colony, caste, reproductive status, alarm, food trail, etc. These evaporate unless reinforced.
- They have a bigger, more advanced, brain region than other insects. It's not multiple brain parts coordinating.
- Using CRISPR to knock out pheromone receptors makes ants unable to communicate. Mutant ants wander aimlessly until killed by the colony.
- They tap each other with their antennae: to taste skin for identification, or to beg for regurgitated food.
- Some ants have a scraper on their waist that they rub against their abdomen. Triggers "emergency alarm", e.g. "I'm buried" or "Help me cut!"
Ant colonies are superorganisms, i.e. agents that work together to produce emergent behavior. They have sterile castes. Only ants, bees, naked mole rats, ... qualify.
- The nest is like a giant lung. Passive ventilation sucks CO2 from top chimneys and brings in O2 from lower entrances. They regulate temperature by opening/closing nest entrances. They send workers out for water to evaporatively cool the nest.
- They circulate nutrients by vomiting food into each others mouths. (Ants have two stomachs - one for themselves, one for sharing.) Ants can't digest meat but larvae can, so they feed meat to larvae and share the digested food. Larvae act like a liver.
- They have an immune system. Sanitation squads carry dead ants far away. Fungally infected ants leave the nest and die alone. Infected pupae are killed by workers.
- They have a neural system. Memory is stored in pheromone trails.
Ant politics exists. E.g. Workers destroy eggs laid by other workers, protect sister-laid eggs, etc.
Ants are only ~20% of human biomass, not 100% as the book claims, but that's 2.5m ants per human!
Sterile ants, which are all female, help the queen reproduce instead of having their own kids.
- Ants, bees, wasps, etc. are haplodiploid, i.e. females have father + mother genes, males develop from unfertilized eggs (only mother genes).
- So, sisters share 75% of genes, more than 50% with their own kids. Helping mothers make sisters is better than having kids!
- (And if this isn't an alien civilization, what is? We don't need sci-fi. Nature is weirder than fiction.)
But their math doesn't hold up!
- If the queen produces 50% brothers (with 25% common genes) and 50% sisters (75% common genes), the average is 50% common genes, same as having kids.
- But building a nest is hard, specialization is efficient, etc. So ants stay sterile and help the colony.
- BTW, this gene math only works if the queen is 100% monogamous - so they are, or at least, were, until evolution locked it in.
- (Making nature one-step less alien. But still weird.)
Epigenetics determines caste. More food or specific food (e.g. royal jelly in bees) changes gene expression of the same DNA.
- When a queen dies, some ants (e.g. Indian jumping ants) can reprogram a worker ant into a queen through diet!
Leafcutter ants have been "farming" for 50 million years. Rather, are part of an agricultural symbiosis.
- They cut leaves and feed it to a fungus they cultivate in their nests.
- They protect the fungus from pests using antibiotics produced by bacteria living on their bodies. They clear decay and weeds.
- They can't live without the fungus because it produces a nutrient (Arginine) that they need but can no longer make themselves.
Ants communicate using pheromones, touch, and sound.
- Pheromones can communicate species, colony, caste, reproductive status, alarm, food trail, etc. These evaporate unless reinforced.
- They have a bigger, more advanced, brain region than other insects. It's not multiple brain parts coordinating.
- Using CRISPR to knock out pheromone receptors makes ants unable to communicate. Mutant ants wander aimlessly until killed by the colony.
- They tap each other with their antennae: to taste skin for identification, or to beg for regurgitated food.
- Some ants have a scraper on their waist that they rub against their abdomen. Triggers "emergency alarm", e.g. "I'm buried" or "Help me cut!"
Ant colonies are superorganisms, i.e. agents that work together to produce emergent behavior. They have sterile castes. Only ants, bees, naked mole rats, ... qualify.
- The nest is like a giant lung. Passive ventilation sucks CO2 from top chimneys and brings in O2 from lower entrances. They regulate temperature by opening/closing nest entrances. They send workers out for water to evaporatively cool the nest.
- They circulate nutrients by vomiting food into each others mouths. (Ants have two stomachs - one for themselves, one for sharing.) Ants can't digest meat but larvae can, so they feed meat to larvae and share the digested food. Larvae act like a liver.
- They have an immune system. Sanitation squads carry dead ants far away. Fungally infected ants leave the nest and die alone. Infected pupae are killed by workers.
- They have a neural system. Memory is stored in pheromone trails.
Ant politics exists. E.g. Workers destroy eggs laid by other workers, protect sister-laid eggs, etc.
November 12, 2021
This is a book that I've always held in my room because I've always had a very large interest in ants. This book was co-authored by Edward Wilson, who is somewhat considered one of the fathers of Myrmecology or the study of ants. This book is a book I would highly recommend to people that like sciences or entomology. When people look at ants nowadays, they see all ants as the same. They say that there are black ants, and brown ants, and fire ants, but it's very different than that. This book introduces concepts of superorganisms, which is a concept that is generally used in the myrmecological community. It is said that ants aren't individual creatures and that they are a part of a larger "super brain." This book introduces concepts and species like Atta Cephalotes (the Leafcutter Ant) and the Army Ant, which are two species that are of the more developed ants. It's introduced that ants in the species Atta and Acromyrmex cut leaves off of trees and bring them back to their own colonies for their fungus. Their fungus consumes these leaves and the ants eat the fungus. The ants take care of the fungus and tend for it as we tend for our agriculture. Army ants spread the forest floor not staying in a specific spot and always on the move. They build a nest that lasts a few days and then leave to go somewhere else. They devour everything in their path, sometimes taking down small dogs and cats. This book shows us how ants aren't just basic creatures we don't like and that ants aren't just insects that steal from our picnics. They are much more. This book is definitely recommended by me to everyone.
January 8, 2022
I am not presumptuous enough to review a work by probably the best experts on ants there are (or were - E. O. Wilson has unfortunately passed away since I started reading this book). This is their shortened popular version of the larger professional work. As such I found it completely satisfying: it told me more about ants than I ever suspected I would want to know. If you entertain a similar interest - read it.
July 14, 2019
Making ants the most interesting insects on the planet and second most interesting species.
January 24, 2021
Best science book ever.
January 25, 2021
The greatest biology masterpiece since Darwin's work.
January 30, 2021
Awesome!!
July 25, 2021
Amazing and ... never finishable
April 4, 2023
What a monster book. Wow though I love myrmecology and I’m happy I stuck with this one.
February 24, 2013
I'm looking at an incredible sleek, well designed creature, with smooth surfaces and tiny features that put a Ferrari to shame. It's got little grooves to tuck in antennas when fighting. Tiny chemical factories that produce everything from poison to identifying scents to all that are needed for reproductive and digestive processes.
And their society is organized for food gathering and processing. They link together to move heavy objects. They design complex structures. Explore their world and form organized fighting armies, while communicating silently.
Each page of this book left me in awe, but somehow the authors were immune. Instead presenting a book of half dry facts, and the other half an exercise to explain how all this could be explained by Darwinian theory.
The authors accept so much at face value either because it's not their field, or they are blind to molecular complexity of ordinary processes. For example, how can you write about all the different chemicals emitted by these tiny creatures without wondering how these tiny organs know how to produce chemicals that you or I would have difficulty creating in a fully equipped lab?
I know a science book shouldn't just scream about how amazing things are, but a touch of humility and wonder would be nice.
And their society is organized for food gathering and processing. They link together to move heavy objects. They design complex structures. Explore their world and form organized fighting armies, while communicating silently.
Each page of this book left me in awe, but somehow the authors were immune. Instead presenting a book of half dry facts, and the other half an exercise to explain how all this could be explained by Darwinian theory.
The authors accept so much at face value either because it's not their field, or they are blind to molecular complexity of ordinary processes. For example, how can you write about all the different chemicals emitted by these tiny creatures without wondering how these tiny organs know how to produce chemicals that you or I would have difficulty creating in a fully equipped lab?
I know a science book shouldn't just scream about how amazing things are, but a touch of humility and wonder would be nice.
January 19, 2016
The comprehensive treatment of one of the most interesting groups of organisms on the planet. Ants farm fungus, shepherd aphids, construct underground networks and arboreal empires, harvest seeds, enslave and parasitise each other, travel as nomads or fortify defenses with their own bodies. I love learning about ants, and this book provided me with a resource that will keep on giving. Having read it, I immediately wanted to dive back in to its fascinating storehouses of detail about the "little things that run the world".
One of my favourite images from this book is that of certain ant species bringing in their aphid charges during the winter in temperate regions, then returning them to their host plants in spring.
Wonderful, beautiful, awesome.
One of my favourite books of all time.
One of my favourite images from this book is that of certain ant species bringing in their aphid charges during the winter in temperate regions, then returning them to their host plants in spring.
Wonderful, beautiful, awesome.
One of my favourite books of all time.
December 13, 2014
I had read Wilson's and Holldobler's popular account of Ant Societies: Journey to the Ants and was fascinated. I saw The Ants in a bookstore and was amazed by the book, its breadth of subject, physical layout, and photography. The book is intended for specialist, but is readable by anyone with a basic background in natural history. I have read about half the book over ten years, but I still return to yearly when I want to enjoy excellent, engaging scientific writing about a marvelous animal. It is a beautiful book with inexhaustible content.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews