Susanne Foitzik

Real Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Shortlisted for the 2022 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize

This sweeping portrait of the world’s uncontested six-legged conquerors will open your eyes to the secret societies thriving right beneath your feet—and shift your perspective on humanity.

Publisher’s note: Planet of the Ants was previously published in hardcover as Empire of Ants.

Ants number in the ten quadrillions, and they have been here since the Jurassic era. Inside an anthill, you’ll find high drama worthy of a royal court; and between colonies, high-stakes geopolitical intrigue is afoot. Just like us, ants grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and make vaccines. And, just like us, ants have a dark side: They wage war, despoil environments, and enslave rivals—but also rebel against their oppressors.

Engineered by nature to fulfill their particular roles, ants flawlessly perform a complex symphony of tasks to sustain their colony—seemingly without a conductor—from fearsome army ants, who stage twelve-hour hunting raids where they devour thousands, to gentle leafcutters cooperatively gardening in their peaceful underground kingdoms.

Acclaimed biologist Susanne Foitzik has traveled the globe to study these master architects of Earth. Joined by journalist Olaf Fritsche, Foitzik invites readers deep into her world—in the field and in the lab. (How do you observe the behavior of ants just millimeters long—or dissect a brain the width of a needle?) With more than sixty black-and-white photographs and illustrations throughout, Planet of the Ants will inspire new respect for ants as a global superpower—and raise new questions about the very meaning of “civilization.”

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Decidedly a book for those seeking information about ants, and the unbelievably complex natural world they rule over, manage, and allow us...quite graciously, I think after reading this book...to exist on.

If not for antkind, humanity would struggle to exist briefly, then wink out. This is not a supposition, as reading this analysis of exactly what ants get up to, and how important it is they get up to it, will elucidate for you.

Eminent German myrmecologist Foitzik explains with a fortuitous eye for the *telling* detail the ecological role of the ant species we've learned of so far, and who really knows how many more there are awaiting discovery? We *think* there are over 22,000 species, and we've classified by niches and relationships about two-thirds of those. We think there are tens of quadrillions of individual ants on Earth today: that's over 10,000,000,000,000,000.

Is your mind blown yet? Does the sheer biomass that ants represent now begin to dawn on you?

Translator Ayça Türkoglu turns the erudite prose by the learnèd expert in ant studies into very readable English. Olaf Fritsche's eye for the journalistically important details (he was an editor at the German-language edition of Scientific American), and long experience as a German-language writer of books for children, means the text is crisp and clearly organized. The photos are quite good at illustrating the points made in the text:

Ants occupy a vital position in the entire planet's ecology. I think this is underappreciated, even among the nature-minded folk who read widely. It really should be required of us that we take more important information about the true rulers of the Earth on board.

Anything else I could tell you is just a bastardized version of the authors' far more educated prose. What I'm here to tell you is that this read is packed with important and interesting facts, presented in a very readable way (you noticed the fact that this book was shortlisted for a German-English translation award, right?), about a very underappreciated genus of animal. It is fine for the science-mad fourteen-year-old and up as a #Booksgiving gift. I would encourage you to gift it to every young woman with a fondness for life sciences of any kind: Susanne Foitzik is world-ranked in her field, and a very prolific scientist with an excellent reputation.

A message we can, I trust, agree is one we need to send to the generation being educated in the US these days.… (més)