Living in the Shadows (5)

I started this little series to honour the living things that exist on the shadows, as I was able to find so many examples where I was. This was absolutely the most striking example. While walking down a path, I came across a series of narrow channels running across the path. I originally thought they were erosion channels caused by runoff, but upon closer examination I was stunned by what the shadows revealed. They were actually paths, worn deep into the ground, by the traffic of ants...thousands and thousands of ants. Each path seemed to go from a colony to a single tree, where the ants would scour the tree for their needs. As I watched this particularly shadowy path (sections of it were actually tunneled under grass), I could see ants returning with seeds, dead insects, ant eggs from other colonies successfully raided. It was incredible! I realized at that moment how truly trivial and fragile humans are on the Earth compared to the the power of the ant.



A close up of the above.