Antz (1998)

directed by Eric Darnell & Tim Johnson

Emma Riehle Bohmann

When I was young, I, like most other people I know, made a habit of terrorizing insects. Summer evenings, my cousins and I would run around my grandparents’ yard catching fireflies, seeing how many we could trap in a jar, laughing at the way they’d crawl over one another on the smooth glass as they searched for an escape. We’d pull their glowing abdomen from their body and stick it onto our finger, waving our hand around and calling it a ring. “So beautiful,” we’d say. “So pretty.”

Ants didn’t fare much better. We stomped on them, flicked them with our fingers and watched them tumble across the sidewalk, used a magnifying glass to burn them (as well as leaves, blades of grass, and my sister’s Nalgene bottle, for which she never quite forgave us). We were constantly destroying anthills by scattering them with sticks, baseball bats, our feet. Whenever we’d find a colony swarming anywhere on the sidewalk—probably in search of a new home, their old one having been destroyed by none other than yours truly—we’d run into the house, heat a pot of water, bring it outside, dump it on them, and cheer as the ants were boiled and drowned.

I tell you all this not to draw any parallels between myself and the nameless, careless, destructive human in the movie Antz, but rather to remind you that ants are creepy and most likely hold a grudge and you need to make sure you’re ready when they rise up to take over the world.

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According to the internet, which we all know is the ultimate source of knowledge and only contains verified facts, there are more than 10,000,000,000,000 (that’s 10 quadrillion, for those of you keeping track) ants in the world, compared with a measly 7,600,000,000 humans. It is entirely possible that ants not only outnumber us, but outweigh us.

To make matters worse, ants aren’t always the tiny little insect you see skittering out of the way of your foot. Female ants of the dinoponera genus can grow to be nearly 2 inches long. They’re found in South America, which happens to be home to many of the most terrifying ant species. Like the bullet ant, which can grow up to 1.2 inches in length and whose sting can take 24 hours to recover from. Or the fire ant, which will swarm and sting any disturber. Or Argentine ants, one of the most invasive species in the world, whose colonies can contain up to 300 different queens, making them extremely difficult to eradicate. Or the trap-jaw ant, the hormigra tigre ant, the army ant, the Aztec ant—you get the picture. Plus, can we talk about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Those ants literally carried a human into their anthill to feast on for the next year. We all know that Indiana Jones is 100% accurate 100% of the time, so let this be a warning to you.

But if you think you can avoid ants simply by avoiding South America, you’re wrong. Ants are everywhere. They’ve been found on every continent except for Antarctica. There are even ants in Greenland, though they were imported by humans (I’m assuming accidentally, but honestly, who knows?). Not only do they outnumber and outweigh us, but they’re easily as ubiquitous as we are.

And that’s not even considering the fact that ants can lift 10-50 times their own body weight, can carry said item in their mouth (could you carry a car in your mouth? Even if you could lift it? I didn’t think so), can stay alive underwater for ridiculous lengths of time, can swim, can jump, etc., etc. Some female ants can even clone themselves as a means of reproduction without males. Oh, and sometimes ants invade other colonies and steal their larvae and raise them as slaves. If you’re not preparing for the ant uprising now, you’re already too late.

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The movie Antz would have you believe that this insect population is full of smart, funny, caring individuals who just want to be free to choose their own destinies (or at least their own career paths), fall in love, and help their friends and family. Also there are some bad apples who want to murder all the other ants and start a new colony elsewhere, but don’t worry, Christopher Walken will have a change of heart and end up on Team Good Ants. Ants—they’re just like us!

Here are a few things I learned about ants from Antz:

1. Ants dig with pickaxes.

2. Ants can join forces and become giant wrecking balls, or sometimes a ladder.

3. Termites vomit acid.

4. An ant can lose its entire body and its head will survive and even be able to talk and impart wisdom.

5. Ants are all New Yorkers.

To be honest, Antz is not a great movie. I’d argue it’s not even a good movie. (Though it’s better than A Bug’s Life, in which they couldn’t even get the number of legs right.) The highest praise I’d give it is mediocre, and that’s only because there’s something charming about imagining the busy lives of ants, the ways in which our trash cans become their paradise, our magnifying glasses their pillars of fire shooting down from the sky, our gum-riddled tennis shoes their demise.

In Antz, the world of these insects teeters on a knife’s edge. What they don’t seem to realize is that at any given instant, a diabolical human could come along and wipe out their entire colony. While they’re plotting to destroy each other and then discovering that they are strongest when they work together, their entire existence depends on the whims of the humans tramping around in their midst.

Maybe I’m giving us too much credit. The fact is, ants were around before we came into existence and I’m sure they’ll be here long after we’re gone (see above re: the ant uprising). That’s an impressive feat, to say the least. While we’re busy destroying our planet in whatever way we can think of, they’re hardily going about their business, carrying off leaves or twigs or other ant-slaves or whatever else you can think of. As the world heats up, as towns flood and fires burn and ice caps melt, the ants are marching steadily, on to their next meal, their next colony, their next home.

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So where does this leave us? Is our only hope for the future to attack the ants, destroy every colony we find, wage war against this enemy that, despite being so small, is sure to be our undoing?

Well, no. See above, re: us destroying the planet all on our own. I can’t say at this point whether climate change or an ant uprising will be the end of humans, though I’m pretty sure it will be one of the two. There are actions we can take in the face of both possibilities, though to be honest, those actions feel like they can only delay the inevitable. The enormity of what we are facing often feels overwhelming. We can pledge to drive less, turn down our heat, consume less meat, recycle and compost, but those acts so often feel like drops of rain in the ocean—never enough to change the salinity of the water.

But it’s not all bad news. Because it still might be the ants that take us out, and one more thing I learned about ants (though not from Antz): they can be turned into zombies. There’s a species of fungus called cordyceps whose spores are deadly to ants. Cordyceps can be found all over the world, but this fungus is especially prevalent in (where else?) the jungles of South America.

Here’s how it works: a cordyceps spore lands on an ant and infects its brain, turning the ant into a sort of zombie. The ant becomes disoriented and then, as the infection takes hold, gripped by a desire to climb. Up it goes, ascending leaf stalks, trees, branches, blades of grass, anything nearby that offers height. When it reaches the top, the ant grips the leaf/branch/twig tightly with its mandibles and doesn’t let go. This is essentially the end of the ant: over the next three weeks, the spore will hatch, sending the body of the fungus erupting through the ant’s head, a long thin spindle growing from the insect’s desiccated body. When the fungus reaches maturity, it releases its own spores, which then float through the air, landing on unsuspecting ants going about their business below, and beginning the entire process over again.

It’s creepy. It’s deadly. It’s been known to wipe out entire colonies. But the ants know this, and because of that, they are able to take defensive measures. When a worker comes across an infected ant, it will carry its body far away from the colony and deposit it there, abandoning it to its fate—but saving the rest of the ants in the process.

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It’s January now, a new year, a new decade, which, if the internet is anything to go on, seems to mean something to most people. I’m not much for resolutions, though I understand the impulse. It’s the idea of starting over with a clean slate: all the mistakes from the previous year, all the wrong choices and bad decisions we made, gone.

But of course, nothing is ever actually erased. Our flaws remain with us, and the consequences of our poor decisions linger, ignorant of the changing calendar. The earth doesn’t care about our regrets, about our wish to take something back, to redo our lives.

I still fuck with the ants sometimes. Sometimes, when I find a long line of them, marching, marching, marching along the pavement toward the anthill they’ve created in a crack in the sidewalk, I try to disrupt their progress. I place sticks or leaves in their path, hoping to create confusion, to throw them off course. Occasionally this tactic works, but more often, the ants simply go around it. Even if the obstacle must appear, to them, the size of a mountain, they traverse its edges until they regain their original path.

Maybe there’s a lesson here, something beyond just the obvious “stop tormenting ants.” It’s about determination, about remaining undaunted in the face of difficulty. About continuing on, when it would be easier to stop.

Or maybe there is no lesson. Maybe there are just ants, and humans, and millions of other species, and a burning planet that we all call home. Maybe January is a time for reflection and resolution, or maybe it’s just another month. Maybe there are fungal spores floating in the air that spell our doom, or maybe it’s just pollen, merely spelling discomfort for those prone to allergies.

There aren’t always neat, clean answers to our questions, especially when those questions are things like, “Will the ants kill us all or are we doing a perfectly fine job of that without their help?” (Interestingly enough, if you google this question, you get a bunch of hits related to gardening and farming.

The ants may take their revenge one day; they’d certainly be justified in doing so. It may be a relief when the end finally comes, however it comes. Or we may fight it, desperate to continue, to survive. I can’t say. But one thing I do know: I’m stocking up on cordyceps spores. Just in case.

Emma Riehle Bohmann lives in Minneapolis, where she reads, writes, runs, and tries to trick herself into loving winter. She is currently working on a novel.