The beauty of ant antics
Deborah M. Gordon enjoys a photographic paean to individual ants and their rarely glimpsed 
exploits on behalf of the collective.

Ant expert and photographer Mark Moffett 
likes to explore. In Adventures Among Ants, 
he describes his tropical encounters with 
his favourite kind of ant — the marauding 
type that forages as a huge stream, collecting 
prey as it goes. He climbs trees full of sting-
ing ants, sits out in torrential rain in the jun-
gle and endures relentless mosquitoes. This 
book showcases the pay-off: the moment 
when Moffett’s camera captures ants look-
ing fantastic as they effortlessly accomplish 
the incredible.

Moffett’s ants are always sleek, polished and 
doing something spectacular. When an editor 
of National Geo-
graphic magazine 
first saw his photos, 
Moffett relates, she 
wondered how he 
made the ants look so 
glamorous. Anyone 
who has ever tried 
to take a photo of an 
ant has to wonder 
the same thing. They 
are not co operative 
subj e c t s ,  and  t he 
warmer they are, the 
faster they move. If 
there is enough light 
to provide sufficient 
depth of field to see 
the whole ant in focus, 
it is probably so hot 
that the ant will dash 
out of range before one 
can click the shutter. Many years ago I attended 
an ant-photography workshop where Moffett 
proudly explained how to use three flashes to 
eliminate the tiny patch of light made by the 
reflection of a single flash on the ant’s abdo-
men, which he found unattractive. The rest of 
us would struggle to get the ant in focus at all. 

Moffett’s close-ups convey an impression 
of calm and order. In one photo, neat rows of 
driver ants migrate to a new nest, each carrying 
a pupa. To the naked eye, eddies of ants merely 

for m  an  i n c h o at e 
wave. In another, tidy 
chains of weaver ants 
pull the edges of a leaf 
together to make their 
nest. As an ‘exploding 
ant’ dies alongside 
another that she has 
k i l le d by r uptur-
ing her abdomen 
to douse the enemy 
w it h  yel l ow  go o, 
both seem to have 
achieved a Zen-like 

resignation to their fate. Even the marauder 
ants covering Moffett’s sock in another photo 
look purposeful, intent on making their way 
to the top.

Moffett is driven by his admiration for the 
competence of individual ants. He writes 
mostly about how ant species differ in what 
each individual can do by itself, and what 
only a group can accomplish — just as a single 
person could grow his or her own food, but 
would have to work with others to construct a 

large building. However, unlike construction 
workers, individual ants do not assess what 
needs to be done or follow a blueprint. They 
respond to local cues, enabling ant colonies to 
accomplish tasks collectively. 

It is hard to imagine how such emergent 
behaviour could be photographed on the close-
up scale at which Moffett excels, and this may 
be why his accounts of collective behaviour 
in the text, as well as his photographs, tend to 
bypass the imperfect or stochastic. He writes 
that “in science we learn in bits and pieces, leav-
ing others to unravel the details”. The pieces he 
seeks involve individual achievements, rather 
than colony function; he wants to be the first to 
see a new ant escapade and capture it on film, 
not to test hypotheses. Adventures Among Ants 
offers exotic tales of places you will probably 
never go, and glimpses of beautiful ants per-
forming marvellous feats.  ■
Deborah M. Gordon is a behavioural ecologist in 
the Department of Biology at Stanford University, 
Stanford, California 94305-5020, USA, and 
author of Ant Encounters. 
e-mail: dmgordon@stanford.edu

Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari 
with a Cast of Trillions
by Mark W. Moffett
University of California Press: 2010. 288 pp. 
$29.95, £20.95

Photographer Mark Moffett (left) goes to great lengths to capture detailed 
images, such as this one of a leaf-cutter ant clipping leaf tissue.

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Vol 465|13 May 2010

BOOKS & ARTS

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	The beauty of ant antics