I relocated an ant hill because I wanted to be ecologically sound and then the ants got all over me and I had to bat them off and I think some of them died and I feel really itchy and now I’ll never

be happy again. In which Hari discusses colonies, faulty neural networks and the horrors of greenhouses,

Image credit: Sueypix

Hello, dearest reader. Yes, I know I’m halfway through a series of articles on gamification and nature, but this is my Substack, and the end of term was very tiring, and I want to moan about something that is of great personal and societal import.

Clearing out the greenhouse in the spring is my least favourite part of having an allotment. There is nothing positive about it. It is too hot, you feel like you inhale about half a tonne of dry soil dust, the weeds are stronger than oxes and it is Just. So. Humid. It is entirely intolerable at the best of times, but made worse because none of us are organised enough to clear out last year’s crop until the following spring, which means anthills have time to form in the tomato pots and their surrounding areas, which means muggins here has to relocate the anthills to save them from otherwise inevitable mass murder.

We have discussed my keenness to avoid the mass destruction of animals here before. That is often easier for me to fight for because I like the animal in question. I have no problem with ants. On their own, they are wonderful companions. In groups, however, they tickle the neuronal centre of my brain dedicated to ‘ick’ in a way that very few other things can. The thought that ants may outweigh the total biomass of birds and mammals combined, and are simply under the ground roaming all over each other, appals me – not in my back garden, my arthropod acquaintances, let us remain an island of strangers. This, of course, makes me feel very stupid because they are just ants. They are – apart from their bites, which can feel quite unpleasant – relatively harmless, at least in the UK. I think being murdered by a colony of ants is probably quite a rare occurrence, here in Wales, at least.

I do understand why I – and so many others – am so appalled by ants. Numerous evolutionary theorists have posited the pathogen avoidance hypothesis, which suggests that disgust is an evolutionary response that prevents us from getting ill or catching parasites. Seeing many little ants crawling around, particularly when many of them begin to crawl around on you because you’ve just picked up their house, activates the bit of our brain that says ‘THESE THINGS MIGHT BORE HOLES INTO YOUR SKIN AND LAY EGGS’ and, before you realise it, you are screeching and throwing them off. This is a response that you can unlearn, of course, but it does seem to be a process of unlearning, and many of us are just not exposed enough to these experiences to ever actually ‘unlearn’.

Let me explain then, the process of dealing with said ant hills. First of all, I try to pull out a dead tomato plant. Then, dozens of tiny creatures begin to pour out, trying to recover the damage that I have just made in their little in their plant-pot home. I then decide to remove the plant pot (it is one of those ones with a hole in the bottom so the plant can root into the ground), and the little creatures enter a state of abject panic (which is understandable, given the circumstances). I remove two more plant pots and discover an enormous anthill that crosses over the three. I then turn to my mother for assistance, who says she will buy ant powder. I am now in a moral quandary. I am, as one of my wonderful friends pointed out, now on my way to the ecological Hague either way, but I do have a choice: allow the genocide of this group of ants who wish harm on no one, or force them to relocate to the nearby hedge. I choose the latter because I have a conscience.

The ants do not understand that I am attempting to save them from a worser fate, and, understandably, a brave few attempt to attack me as I am putting them in a large container. I, because I am stupid and have the shock response of a small child, screech again and bat them off. They are probably permanently disabled or killed. I believe the ant colony will tell stories of the good soldiers who were martyred to the giant fleshy golem on that day. My mother asks me to move a stick that said ants are walking on, and this gives them a land-bridge for more of them to access my arms and hands. More perish to my immaturity. As I am moving their eggs (as they indeed try to move them away from me) I am horrified at how large they are. They are the size of normal ants. These are probably flying ant eggs, and I think about how horrifying it would be if, once a year, giant winged humans flew around the Earth, and wonder how and why giant flying ants are possible.

Ants are, by all accounts, incredible. They have graveyards and methods of agriculture. They create vast structures that benefit ecosystems and support the life of other organisms. They aerate soil, which makes it easier for plants to grow and nutrients to get to them. Ant colonies have collective memories, and information is passed on from generation to generation. Acrobat ants use their jaws to do flips, because they’re just cool like that. For the planet, they are far better than we are. They are, probably, the posthuman ideal. It is a shame then, that my little brain cannot tell the difference between a noble worker ant and a parasitic alien subspecies that has come to eat my flesh.

The worst thing about the pathogen avoidance hypothesis is that it makes you think about a threat long after it is gone. I still feel itchy. I think I’ll go wash my hair.