The Ant Colony

The Ant Colony

By: Rodrigo P. de Vera, Jr., Ed.D.

There was once an ant colony where ants lived in laxity. Works were usually done by elder ants while younger ants cared for nothing, except for playing all day long. It was a tradition that adult ants had to work for the whole colony and that young generation of ants had to stay at home to play with their fellow young ants. If tired, they had to rest, sleep or just stayed idle the whole day.

Years had passed and the number of working adult ants dwindled due to poor health and old age. On the other hand, the number of young generation of ants grew tremendously. Their daily needs were not met due to the small number of working adult ants. Adult ants could only work for a few hours due to their deteriorating health and strength.

Now, that the population of younger generation bloated, young ants forced even those older ants who already retired from work. If older ants were caught not working, younger ants normally punished them. Literally, adult ants became slaves in their own colony. Such treatment toward the older generation of ants became the root cause of many deaths among older ants leaving a vacuum of workers in the field.

Because of exhaustion, many of older ants died as their bodies could no longer cope up with the strenuous work enforced by the younger generation of ants to them. Due to the dwindling population of adult ants, the demand for food became great. Starvation became the leading death for most adult ants because young ants were given priority to be fed. Their situation became worse when heavy rains flooded their colony underground. Younger ants could easily evacuate away from their colony as they still had the strength to climb toward the surface. Right after the flood, thousands of adult ants died of drowning.

When water subsided, the remaining survivors both young and old alike sat down and talked together heart to heart. They all agreed to abolish their long tradition of allowing only adult ants to work for the whole colony. This time they made a better law. Everybody had to work for the whole colony regardless of their age and status. Every member of the ant colony had to help each other and had to work for each other.

Because of the new law of the ant colony, laziness had no more place in their place. They worked all day long and learned to store their foods during summer.

Until to this day, ants remain to be working hard just like their ancestors of long time ago.