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Chapter 1
Social Life
We mentioned that ants live in colonies and that
a perfect division of labour exists amongst them. When we take a
closer look at their systems, we shall also see that they have a
pretty interesting social structure. It will also come to our attention
that they are capable of sacrifice at a much higher level than humans
are. One of the most interesting points is that – compared to humans
– they do not know the concepts such as the rich-poor discrimination
and the fight for power that are observed in our societies.
Many scientists, who for years have been doing extensive
research on ants, have not been able to clarify the subject of their
advanced social behaviour. Caryle P. Haskins, Ph.D., the president
of the Carnegie Institute at Washington has this to say:
After 60 years of observation and study,
I still marvel at how sophisticated the ants' social behavior is.
…The ants thus make a beautiful model for our use in studying the
roots of animal behavior.1
Some colonies of ants are so extensive with respect to population
and living area, that it is impossible to explain how they can form
a perfect order over such a vast area. Therefore, it is not easy
not to concur with Dr. Haskins.
As an example of these large colonies we can give
the species of ant, called Formica Yessensis, that lives on the
Ishikari coast of Hokkaido. This ant colony lives in 45,000 interconnected
nests over an area of 2.7 square kilometres. The colony, which is
composed of approximately 1,080,000 queens and 306,000,000 workers
has been named the "Super colony" by the researchers.2
It has been discovered that all production tools and food are exchanged
in an orderly fashion within the colony.
It is very hard to explain how the ants have maintained
this order without any problems, considering the vast area they
are living in. We must not forget that various security forces are
needed for enforcing law and maintaining social order, even in a
civilized country with a low population density. And there is an
administrative staff leading and managing these units. Sometimes,
it does not become possible to maintain the required order without
problems despite all these intense efforts.
Yet in ant colonies there is no need felt for police, gendarmerie
or guards. If we consider that actually the duty of the queens,
whom we think of as the leaders of the colonies, is just to maintain
the species, they do not have a leader or a governor. There is thus
no hierarchy based on a chain of command amongst them. Then who
is it that lays down this order and maintains its continuity?
In the later chapters of the book we shall find answers to this
question and similar others in combination.
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| Ants, which
are very small creatures, pursue their lives with perfect
orderliness in spite of their size |
CASTE SYSTEM
Each ant colony without exception complies strictly
with the caste system. This caste system consists of three major parts
within a colony.
Members of the first caste are the queen and the males who make
reproduction possible. More than one queen may exist in a colony.
The queen has assumed the task of reproducing and thus increasing
the number of individuals making up the colony. Her body is larger
than that of the other ants. The duty of the males on the other
hand is just to fertilize the queen. In fact, nearly all of these
die after the nuptial flight.
The members of the second caste are the soldiers. These take on
duties like the setting up of the colony, finding a new living environment
and hunting.
The third caste consists of worker ants. All of the workers are
sterile females. They take care of the mother ant and her babies;
they clean and feed them. In addition to all these, other jobs in
the colony are also under the responsibility of the workers. They
build new corridors and new galleries for their nests; they search
for food and continually clean up the nest.
The worker and soldier ants also have sub-groups. These are named
slaves, thieves, nurses, guards and foragers. Each group has a different
task. While one group focuses completely on fighting the enemy or
hunting, another group builds nests, and yet another one looks after
maintenance.
Every individual in the ant colonies does his full share of the
work. None of them worry about the position it is in nor the nature
of the job it performs, but it plainly does what is required of
it. What is important is the continuity of the colony.
When we think about how this system could have developed,
we cannot avoid reaching the fact of creation.
Let us explain why: Where there is perfect order, logically we reach
the conclusion that this has certainly been established by a planning
mind. For instance, there is a disciplined order in the military;
it is obvious that the officers in control of the army have established
this order. It would certainly be an absurd idea to assume that
all individuals in the army came together on their own and organized
themselves and that later on they were grouped in different ranks
and started acting in compliance with these ranks. Furthermore,
the officers who have established this order have to keep on carrying
out inspections of this order so that it may persist without any
problems. Otherwise, an army left solely to the troops would soon
be transformed into an unruly crowd, regardless of how well disciplined
it might have been at the beginning.
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Ants within the same colony
who belong to different castes have different
physical appearances as well. Each has a physical build
appropriate for its job
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The ants also have a discipline very similar to
that of the military. Yet the critical aspect is that there is no
"officer", that is any organizing administrator, in sight. The various
caste systems within the ant colony carry out their duties in a faultless
manner; although, yet there is no obvious "central power" which supervises
them.
Then the only explanation is that the central will in question is
an "invisible" one.
This will has achieved such tremendous planning that
people are in awe of it when they try to analyze it. Such awe and
wonderment have been expressed from time to time in various forms
by the researchers as well. Evolutionists, who claim that such a
perfect system has developed as a result of coincidences, are not
able to explain this sacrificial behaviour which is at the core
of this system. An article written on this subject in the Journal
of Bilim ve Teknik indicates this incapability once more:
The problem is why living beings help
each other. According to Darwin's Theory, each living creature
fights for his own survival and reproduces. Since helping others
would relatively decrease the probability of survival of that
living being, this behaviour had to be eliminated by evolution
in the long run. Yet it has been observed that living beings may
be ready to sacrifice.
A classical form of explaining the fact of sacrifice
is that the colonies which are made up of individuals who are
ready to sacrifice for the benefit of the group or the genus shall
be more successful during evolution than those which are made
up of egotistical individuals. However, the point, which is not
explained in this theory, is how the societies which can sacrifice
may maintain this characteristic. A single egotistical individual
who may come up in such a society should be able to transfer its
selfish characteristics to the later generations, since he is
not going to sacrifice himself. Another vague point is that if
evolution happens at the level of societies, what should the dimension
of this society be? Should it be the family, species, genus or
class? Even if there is an evolution simultaneously at more than
one level, what will be the result when interests are in conflict3?
As we can see, it is not possible to explain the
sense of sacrifice in living beings and the social systems based
on this sense with the theory of evolution, that is, by assuming
that living creatures have come into being by chance.
Can the Ants Be Doormen?
When we analyze the details of the system in the
ant colonies, we feel the power of the invisible will, which establishes
and governs this system, in a more concrete way. Now let us take a
look at these details.
The connections to the outer world of the ant nests are usually
via a small hole large enough for an ant to go through. Passing
through these holes is by "permission". There are ants within the
colony whose numbers are not very many with the duty of "serving
as a doorman".
"The doormen" serve as living gates with the shapes
of their heads fitting right in the nest entrance. Furthermore,
the colour and design of their heads are the same as that of the
tree barks in the close surrounding. The doorman sits for hours
at the entrance hole and allows free passage only its nestmates.4
This means that the idea of keeping a doorman to guard the buildings
has been put into practice, before men, by doorman ants, who cover
the entrance with the strongest part of their bodies, who also camouflage
themselves and who do not let in those who do not say the right
"password".
It is quite obvious that that the head of the doorman ant that we
mentioned above fits right into the hole, that its colour and patterns
conform to the environment, and that it does not let in anybody
that it does not know, cannot be up to its own will. There
certainly is an owner of intellect who has designed the body of
the ant in this form and who inspires the job it is doing. To say
that the ant can figure out these duties on its own and serves as
a doorman without running out of patience and without giving up,
would certainly not be a sensible explanation.
Let us think: Why would an ant want to be a doorman? If it had a
choice, why would it pick the job, which is the most cumbersome
and that requires the most sacrifice? If it did have such a chance,
it would certainly pick a job that would provide it with the most
comfortable environment and the best service. The choice, in fact,
has come about with the determination of God. And the doorman
ant performs its duties in full obedience. Only the creator of the
ants may have designed such a perfect colony life to show the striking
side of His art and given particular duties to the ant colony which
abides by this system.
According to the theory of evolution, however, the ants should be
developing in every respect and they should be trying to get into
a caste where they could live a lot more comfortably. However, the
doorman ants make no effort in this direction and they perform their
inspired jobs faultlessly throughout their entire lives.
Expert Ants
The organization, specialization in certain fields, and
communications in the ant world is almost as successful as among
human beings. This is true to such an extent that human beings are
patterning their systems today on the harmonious system of the ants.
The excerpt below illustrates this point:
Ants are beings that
can only live in groups. They cannot survive alone.
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Computer experts today are trying to
reproduce in laboratories the collective behaviour forms of ants
in robots. Instead of very advanced programmes, they are focusing
on robots that cooperate devising between themselves on the basis
of "simple" information elements. In these studies, the basic
principle is the same. Instead of forming a highly advanced robot,
the intention is to develop a herd of robots that are less "intelligent"
but which will undertake the most "complex" tasks, just as the
ants do in the ant colony… These robots will not be very advanced
from the point of "intelligence" when taken one by one, but they
will achieve the division of labour by collective action motivation.
This will be possible because they will have the capacity to exchange
the simplest information with each other. The life and cooperation
in the ant colony has also influenced NASA… The organization is
planning to send many "ant robots" for research on the planet
Mars instead of a single advanced robot. Thus, even if some of
them are destroyed, the surviving members of the team will be
able to complete their tasks5.
Let us now take a look at an interesting example from
the world of "expert ants".
How Does LIvIng In a Group Affect Ants?
The most obvious example of cooperation among ants
is in the behaviour of a worker ant species called Lasius emarginatus.
The individuals of this species have interesting affiliations with
each other. The activities of four worker ants belonging to the group
that works with earth go on when they are separated from the big group.
However, when there is a substance, like glass or stone in between
which prevents them from seeing each other, their rate of work slows
down.
Another example is that when the fire ants are separated from their
groups by a thin barrier, they try to reach the other members of
their colony by piercing this obstruction.
Many variations occur also in the behaviour of ants when the number
of individuals in the group changes. When the number of ants in
the nest increases, it is observed that the activity of each one
of the individuals also proportionally increases. When the worker
ants come together as a group, they get together, calm down and
spend less energy. It has been determined that as the population
increases in some ant species, there is a drop in the amount of
oxygen spent.
What all these examples show us is that ants cannot survive on their
own. These small creatures have been created with characteristics
that allow them to live only in groups or even colonies. And this
proves to us how out of touch with reality are the claims by the
evolutionists with regard to the socializing process of ants. It
is impossible for the ants to have been living alone when they were
first created and to have socialized later on to form colonies.
It would have been impossible for an ant facing such an environment
to have survived. It would have had to reproduce, to build a nest
for itself and its larvae, to feed both itself and its family, be
a doorman, be a soldier and also a worker who took care of the larvae…
We cannot claim that all these jobs requiring an extensive division
of labour could have been performed once upon a time by a single
ant or even a few ants. Furthermore, it is impossible to think that
they worked hard towards socialization while performing these mundane
tasks.
What is deduced from all this is the following: Ants are creatures
who have been living under a social system and in groups since the
day they were first created. This in turn is proof that ants have
come into existence in one single moment with all their characteristics
intact and, if we wish to phrase it better, that they have been
"created".
A Model Headquarters
Let us expand a little the example of an army that we
gave previously. Just think that you arrived at an army headquarters
that is enormously large, but in which there is complete order.
It looks as if you cannot go inside, because the security guards
at the gates do not let in anybody they do not know. The building
is protected with a security system that is strictly supervised.
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In the picture above, we can see the
underground city ants have built in the roots of a tree. In
time, the roots of the tree have been damaged and the tree
has fallen to reveal this secret city.
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Let us just assume that you found a way of getting in.
Various systematic and dynamic activities will catch your attention
inside, for thousands of soldiers are performing their duties in
a strictly orderly fashion. When you search for the secret of this
order, you notice that the building has been designed in a form
entirely suitable for the inhabitants to work in. There are special
departments for each job and these departments are designed so that
the soldiers can work in the easiest manner. For instance, the building
has floors underground, but the department which requires the sun's
energy is located where it may get sunlight at the widest possible
angle. And the departments which have to be in constant touch with
each other are constructed very close to each other so that access
would be facilitated. The warehouses where the surplus materials
are stored are designed as a separate department in one side of
the building. The warehouses where such requirements are kept are
comfortable, accessible locations and there is a wide space right
at the centre of the building where everybody may gather.
The features of the headquarters are not limited to these. The building
is heated uniformly in spite of its vastness. The temperature stays
constant all day long thanks to an extremely advanced central heating
system. Another reason for this is the building's extremely effective
external insulation against all weather conditions.
If the question of how and by whom this type of headquarters
was designed was asked, everybody would say that it is by superior
technology and by a professional team work. Such a headquarters
building can only be built by people who have a certain level of
education, culture, intellect and logic.
However, this headquarters building is actually an ant's
nest. (please see p. 27)
To accumulate the required information to build such
type of a headquarters building would take quite a long part of
human life. However, an ant coming out of the egg knows its duty
at that moment and starts work without losing any time. This shows
that ants possess this information before they are born. All this
information has been inspired in the ants at the time of their creation
by God, the Almighty Who created them.
Self OrganIzatIon In Ants
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In the first stage of nest
building, members of the colony open a tiny hole, then expand
into a labyrinth of chambers. In most of these sections, there
are fungus gardens. These gardens fill the chambers, which
are located near the surface. Larger, deeper pits hold decomposing
plant detritus and waste. A few of these pits, oddly, contain
more soil than organic matter, as if a soil cover is needed
for especially noxious waste. Hot air rises from these refuse
chambers. Cool, oxygen-rich air is drawn into the nest. Openings
directly above the nest are used only for excavation and ventilation.
Cavernous perimeter tunnels form a beltway some 7.5 meters
from the nest.
The most important point
here is that this metropolis has been constructed by ants
who have not taken any architectural or agricultural courses
what so ever .
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There is no leader, planning, or programming in the world
of ants. And the most important point is that there is no chain
of command as we mentioned before. The most complex duties in this
society are carried out without skipping a beat due to an immensely
advanced self-organization. Consider the following example:
When food shortages occur in the colony, the worker ants
are immediately transformed into "feeder" ants and they start feeding
others with the food particles in their reserve stomachs, and when
there is surplus food in the colony, they shed this identity and
again become worker ants
The sacrifice displayed here truly is at an advanced
level. While human beings have not succeeded in fighting hunger
in the world, the ants have found a practical solution to this problem:
to share everything, including their food. Yes, this is a real example
of sacrifice. Giving without hesitation everything it owns including
its food to the next ant, so that it may survive, is just one of
the examples of sacrifice in nature which the theory of evolution
cannot manage to explain.
There is no overpopulation problem for ants. While today,
the metropolises of man are becoming hard to live in due to migration,
lack of infrastructure, misallocation of resources and unemployment,
ants can manage their underground cities, with a population of 50
million in a fantastically orderly fashion, without the feeling
that anything is lacking. Each ant immediately adapts to changes
occurring in its environment. For such a thing to occur, the ants
must have certainly been programmed physically and psychologically.
For the emergence of such extremely well organized systems,
there has to be a "master will" to give them the inspiration to
do their work and to give them orders. Otherwise, great chaos would
ensue rather than order. And this master will pertains to God,
Who owns everything, Who is Almighty, Who directs all living beings
and orders them by inspiration.
The fact that ants perpetually strive without any consideration
of benefit, is proof that they are acting on the inspiration of
a certain "supervisor". God is the master and supervisor of everything
and that every living creature acts on His inspiration.
1 National Geographic, vol.165,
no.6 , p. 775. 
2 Bert Hölldobler-Edward O.Wilson, The Ants, Harvard University
Press, 1990, p. 1.
3 Bilim ve Teknik Dergisi (Journal of Science and Technics), sayý:
190, s. 4.
4 Bert Hölldobler-Edward O.Wilson, The Ants, Harvard University Press,
1990, p. 330-331.
5 Focus Dergisi (Focus Magazine), October 1996.
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