From communication to ants that blow themselves up, there is always enough “action”to keep the text moving along. The first chapter for example begins with “Bureaucracy is the bane of researchers everywhere” – a statement with which many of us will agree, but a good start to a chapter that could have begun so much more prosaically.Įmpire of Ants covers all the ground you would expect from a book on ants, and brings in all the added extras you could want. Army ants, leafcutting ants, weaver ants, the slave making ants and the invasive species would all get a mention, and then there are the many vignettes you could weave in along the way – how ants communicate, the queen–worker split, foraging trails, navigation and so on.A book about ants is almost dutybound to cover this ground and so the challenge for the writer is how to do so in a different and engaging way.Įmpire of Ants manages to cover what might be familiar ground for many potential readers in a different way by bringing in a personal touch.The authors bring the details of their own field work, and their own experiences researching and working with ants, into the chapters and this added colour works well. With a wealth of behaviours, clear parallels to human society and well-recognised ecological importance they are ideal subjects and it is easy to reel off how the chapters of such a book would appear. Ants are a wonderful topic for a popular science book and it is a wonder to me that there aren’t more such books out there.
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