Travails with my ants

This is not exactly a commentary or snippet of Guatemalan life. But it is about Guatemalan ants, so I guess that qualifies.

Last night in my kitchen I was surprised to see a sunflower seed propelling itself across the floor. When I bent down to look I could see it was being pushed by three tiny ants. They were struggling, but kept it moving in a more-or-less a northwesterly direction, while I watched.

Then a fourth ant arrived. Instead of shouldering the burden it ran around to each of the three ants that were carrying the seed, dodging in an out as they marched. Then it circled around the whole operation. ‘Oh’, I thought, ‘here’s the overseer ant.’

Oddly enough, seconds after the arrival of the overseer ant, the seed started moving forward in a different way. Instead of moving forward with the seed straight, it began to rotate forward. The three worker ants were now walking anti-clockwise, rotating the seed and moving it forward at the same time. It seemed to me it was progressing faster, and still in the same direction with this new circular motion, although I did wonder if all that circling could be so efficient.

Then the whole thing stopped rotating and sped up even more. I couldn’t locate the overseer ant for a moment, then I realized it had taken a share of the load. The four of them, pushing together, quickly disappeared under the kitchen bench.

‘And the moral of the story is?’

‘Ummm…There’s more than one way for a bunch of ants to move a sunflower seed?’