The Earth Dwellers: Adventures in the Land of Ants Reprint edition

Set in the nature reserve of La Selva in Costa Rica, this book illuminates the lives of individual ants, allowing them to lead us into their vivid and complex world. Erich Hoyt - along with two of the world's most renowned field biologists, Edward O. Wilson and James L. Brown, Jnr - invites us to enter this world and see it in a unique way: from the ant's point of view. Ants inhabit a world all of their own, a world that is fantastic, alien, yet at times oddly familiar. They plant underground gardens and harvest crops, raise other insects as livestock, build their own roads and bridges and communicate using a complex system of chemical and tactile messages. They also make war and stage bizarre tournaments. Qualities they display such as altruism and loyalty lead Darwin to doubt his theory of evolution by natural selection.