An ant's view of the world

Now that spring has sprung in the northern hemisphere (and appears to have arrived for good even in New England), you may have spent time lying in the grass, smelling the flowers, and doing various other outdoor nature-related things.

I tried lying in the grass today when I saw several ants crawling over and around the blades of grass. They were all red, so I figured I'd better leave post-haste. But it made me start thinking.

What would the world look like to an ant? For the time being, we will assume that the animal is a little over half a centimeter in length.

1. The first thing you would notice is that the lawn has suddenly ballooned into a thick forest of green, spiky trees. A typical blade of grass is maybe three inches long. That's about 75 mm, about 15 times the size of the ant. This is the equivalent of humans being surrounded by trees 90 feet tall. That in itself is not surprising -- after all, we're familiar with 90-foot trees. What would be surprising, however, would be the fact that the trees are actually spaced 5-6 feet apart from your vantage point. This would make for a VERY dense forest. You may often wonder how often you'd get lost in such a forest.

2. The ground is very uneven. A small pebble would be a significant fraction of the size of your body. You know how hard is it walk around uneven ground. You should be thankful that you have six legs for traction.

3. You would be naturally adapted to climb trees. If there are "trees" all over the place and you've got the legs to do it, it would be wise to scamper up a tree to get a wider view of the world.

4. You have cities of your own, in some cases very large ones, which aren't that much different from fortified human cities -- one entrance, dense population, and so forth. So the humans don't see them as they are primarily underground. But does that make them any less sophisticated than us?
Suppose an anthill is (say) 1 cubic foot in size with tunnels and "roads" crisscrossing the area. When this is scaled up to human size, -- 5 mm becoming something like 1600 mm -- what do you have? You've basically gotten yourself a city block which looks like it's been taken right out of downtown Manhattan. 800 feet on a side, 80 stories high. It even has a mayor (or more likely a general in case of army ants), the queen.

5. The little 1-inch diameter dandelion which we tend to throw out or pick has just become a very source of shade. What it effectively will serve as is the equivalent of a 90-foot tall tree with a canopy providing 640,000 square inches of shade. 640,000 square inches is almost 5,000 square feet. That's the size of mansion. Who wants the shady apartment under the flower?

Just think about it...