The Secret Life of Ants

The Secret Life of Ants

They live beneath our feet, run their cities without chaos, and have outlasted every empire we've ever built. The Secret Life of Ants takes you underground into the bustling, miniature world that quietly keeps the planet turning. From royal chambers and chemical warfare to farming, slavery, and supercolonies that span continents, this is the story of civilisation's smallest engineers - and what they can teach us about our own.

Five astonishing facts about ants:

1. Some queens can live for over 20 years, while workers typically live for just a few weeks.
2. A single colony of Argentine ants stretches from northern Italy to the Spanish coast - the largest co-operative society on Earth.
3. British wood ants build mounds that can reach a metre high and host half a million workers.
4. Ants communicate through chemical signals so precise that they can organise cities without ever speaking or seeing.
5. Together, the world's ants weigh roughly as much as the entire human population - and they're still growing.

Written from a distinctly British perspective, The Secret Life of Ants explores the lives of our own garden and woodland species while drawing in remarkable stories from around the world.