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Ants – God’s Amazing Creatures

Article description: Ants are amazing little creatures. In many ways they exhibit “design,” hence argue for a Creator who designed them for their various functions.

One of the most interesting insects of the natural world is the tiny ant. There are over twelve thousand different species. Ants are called “social insects” because they live in groups and help one another in different ways. God made ants with some wonderfully special abilities. One authority has stated that:

[ants] are known for their highly organized colonies and nests, which sometimes consist of millions of individuals. Individuals are divided into sub-fertile, and more commonly sterile, females (“workers,” “soldiers,” and other castes), fertile males (“drones”), and fertile females (“queens”). Colonies can occupy and use a wide area of land to support themselves. Ant colonies are sometimes described as superorganisms because the colony appears to operate as a unified entity (Wikipedia.) 

Ants have a wonderful sense of direction. They travel great distances from their homes and still find their way back. Some scientific experiments have shown that they seem to direct their course by the light of the sun and moon. Ants have compound eyes with specialized cells that detect polarized light which enables them to determine direction. Their home base is often recognized by memory-stored landmarks in their relationship to the position of the sun.

Their tiny bodies are intricately fashioned with a complex glandular system that evidences ingenious design that is impossible to account for on the bases of a series of “evolutionary” accidents. In logic, the “law of teleology” suggests that every thing designed must have a designer! One authority has noted that:

while many types of animals can learn behaviors by imitating other animals, ants may be the only group of animals besides primates and some other mammals in which interactive teaching behavior has been observed. Knowledgeable forager ants of the species Temnothorax albipennis directly lead naïve nest-mates to newly discovered food sources by the excruciatingly slow (and time-costly) process of tandem running. The follower thereby obtains knowledge that it would not have, had it not been tutored, and this is at the expense of its nest-mate teacher. Both leader and follower are acutely sensitive to the progress of their partner. For example, the leader slows down when the follower lags too far behind, and speeds up when the follower gets too close, while the follower does the opposite (Franks and Richardson 2006, 153; emphasis added).

How does one account for this level of intelligence that is so far down on the alleged evolutionary scale of living creatures? The Darwinist theory simply does not make sense.

In Proverbs 6:8, Solomon wrote that the ant “gathers her food in the harvest.” For years this was thought to be a mistake in the Bible. Now we know that some ants do harvest their food. They cut seeds off of certain plants and put them underground in storehouses.

Consider, for example, the parasol ant. It has been described as “fascinatingly industrious.” These tiny creatures may be observed traveling in single file, each with a leaf, several times the size of its own body, hoisted above its head. These leaves will be made into compost. The parasol ants sow, fertilize, and prune their crops. They weed, harvest, and then eat their produce. The crops consist of different kinds of fungus. Their farming skills are so complex that it took scientists nearly a century to piece together their ingenious farming system (Peattie 1964, 48).

Supposedly all of this expertise simply developed accidentally!

Some species of ants are “cow herders.” They pasture their “cattle” (small aphids); these aphids suck the sap of certain plants. The ants bring their “cattle” out each morning and “milk” them for the juice they secrete, just like regular dairy farmers!

Such fascinating and sophisticated skills supposedly developed accidentally, right out of nowhere. Amazing—the naturalistic theories that are concocted just to avoid the conclusion that there is a Creator! Being vain in their reasonings, their senseless hearts are darkened (cf. Romans 1:21), and they cannot draw the most logical conclusions.
 
The ant has been a serious problem for those who believe in evolution. Many ants have been found in hardened tree sap. According to the speculations of evolutionary chronologists (which are not correct), these ants lived millions of years ago, yet these preserved little creatures are virtually identical to the ants that live today! If evolution really happened, why didn’t ants undergo radical changes, adapting to their environment as numerous other creatures allegedly did? This shows there is something radically skewed with the idea of evolution.

We can learn many things from ants. They work hard to provide for their families, and they help one another in their daily lives. Surely we can thank God for these creatures and the lessons they teach us. If we may paraphrase Israel’s king of three millennia ago, “Go to the ant, thou atheist; consider her ways, and abandon your baseless ideology!”

Sources/Footnotes

Franks, N. R. and T. Richardson. 2006. Nature, 439 (7073).

Peattie, D. C. 1964. Marvels and Mysteries of Our Animal World. Reader’s Digest Association.

Wikipedia. s.v. “Ants.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ants. Accessed 3/25/08.

--Wayne Jackson

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