Here in Thailand there are ants everywhere and squashing those that come looking for food in our kitchen becomes an automatic response.
Outside is different and I usually try to avoid killing them. But there are so many! From the tiny but quick-to-bite Fire Ants to the large and aggressive Red Weaver Ants. Then there are the Yellow Crazy Ants that never bite but regularly swarm over my ankles and tickle like mad! I probably see at least a dozen different species regularly.
I usually spend a few hours each day working in the garden both to grow some healthy fruit and veg for us and to provide a welcoming home for wildlife. Accidentally stepping on ants is absolutely unavoidable but recently I started wondering just how many ants do I kill each day?
Here is my calculation.
First, I used a fitness tracker to work out how many steps I take around the garden every day. The answer came to an average of 7,946 steps.
Second, I worked out how often one of my steps lands on an ant. I did this by stepping and then carefully checking to see if there were any ants in the boot-sized space next to where my foot landed. I compared 30 steps on 4 different surfaces - concrete, gravel, bare earth and grass - then worked out that on average I step on an ant every 1.75 footfalls.
This means I step on 4,560 ants every day.
However, they don't all die. So, thirdly, I deliberately stepped on a few ants on the same 4 surfaces and checked what proportion of them actually died or were badly injured enough to make me think they weren't going to last much longer.
The overall fatality rate was only 32%, with an impressive 9 out of 10 on grass surviving intact.
Therefore, the answer to my question is that, on average:
I accidentally kill 1,453 ants every day.
That seems like a lot but at least I know they will all get recycled. I then tried to roughly estimate just how many ants share our garden, which is quite large at about 100m x 30m. The best answer I could come up with was "millions". Perhaps I'll try to work it out properly one day.
In the meantime, I'll just accept that living on this planet means we have an impact on the lives of others, which I cannot realistically avoid but I can at least now tread with a bit more awareness.
