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Whether animals admit it or not, they and I communicate.

The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.

Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.

As a child in the early 1980s, I tended to talk with things in my mouth - food, dentist's tubes, balloons that would fly away, whatever - and if no one else was around, I'd talk anyway.

I ate ants. They weren't that bad.

As a child, I was consumed with a near-obsessive curiosity about what the world felt like for other creatures.

When I was a little kid, I told stories.

The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.

We hope that, when the insects take over the world, they will remember with gratitude how we took them along on all our picnics.