Peter Tieryas > Status Update

Good question. Leaving aside the obvious (like, "what big, lethal feet they have!"), they might be curious about how seemingly disorganized we are, why we have our nests above ground, and why we don't leave any scent trails for our nest-mates. Of course, ants have very limited vision and rely mostly on scent, so they might not actually perceive what we look like, but this sets up an interesting short story idea of understanding a world solely on the basis of scent and vibration.

Kane wrote: "Good question. Leaving aside the obvious (like, "what big, lethal feet they have!"), they might be curious about how seemingly disorganized we are, why we have our nests above ground, and why we do..."

Thanks Kane! Great answer, man! Seeing as our universe may just be vibrations based on super strings, it might be similar to our own theories of what the universe is and a higher organism probably would scoff at our minor senses, ha ha =)

And, for the fact-hungry in you, if I am not mistaken, most ants that we see are female (the males are a small portion, and they are the breeders, although both select members of the males and females of their "caste" grow wings). Another fact: your average ant lives for three years, but the queen can live to 20. Another bizarre fact: the liver fluke can co-opt the ant's brain and pilot it via a kind of remote control from inside its basal ganglia. It allows the ant it inhabits to go about its normal duties until night time, after which it takes control and pilots the ant to the tips of grass blades so that it has a higher chance of being eaten by a cow (where the liver fluke wants to go so that it can replicate in the bowels of the cow). Now here's an even bigger challenge for thought: plant senses! (shameless plug: I have a paper coming out on phytosemiotics - the way plants use signals). But I believe, in terms of alternate senses, Alain Robbe-Grillet once wrote an entire novel from the perspective of growing grass (not sure, though). One good alternate senses paradigm novel would be Bulgakov's Heart of A Dog (I actually love this one much more than the popular Master and Margarita). Highly recommended! All of this is making me want to relive memories of reading Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology!