When we encounter them outdoors, ants fascinate us; discovered in
our kitchen cupboards, they elicit horror and disgust. Charlotte
Sleigh’s Ant elucidates the cultural reasons behind our varied
reactions to these extraordinary insects, and considers the variety of
responses that humans have expressed at different times and in different
places to their intricate, miniature societies. Ants have figured as
fantasy miniature armies, as models of good behaviour, as infiltrating
communists and as creatures on the borderline between the realms of the
organic and the machine: in 1977 British Telecom hired ant experts to
help solve problems with their massive information network.
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