Ant fills a hole with its whole body.

I don't use the word "amazing" and "great" very often. It's amazing, I know, but with a great vocabulary like mine, there's usually a great many options for words that you can use. But I have to say: Ants, they'reAnd yes, they're amazing.Growing up, and going to Elementary school, you're guaranteed to get made fun of at some point in your life. There's very few who have never been the butt of a joke. Maybe you were the fat kid, or the dorky kid. Maybe you ate glue, or smelled bad. In my case, I was a boy with the name Alishah. The only equalizer in all of this was that we all got made fun of at some point - but the fact still remained, we were all very cruel.And little has changed, I've found. There's fewer people who eat glue, that's for sure - but there's strong evidence in this world (particularly if you pay any attention to Global affairs, politics, or even the Olympics) that we humans seldom get along. In fact, the sad truth of it is, whenever we do get along, someone has to go ahead and point out how great it is that we're able to get along - which says without saying, that the norm is quite the contrary - otherwise there would be no need to remark anything.It seems to me that the only time humans ever unify, the only time we set aside our differences, is in Hollywood movies. And Hollywood itself knows this whole "getting along" thing is a little far fetched itself, so it's only ever reserved for one specific circumstance: fighting aliens, or rogue robots. And even in those scenarios, we often find ourselves in two circumstances: i) We're all united, because somehow we're all American, as in Starship Troopers. ii) Despite a united humanity, there are still some of us who will help out the rogue robots (see: The Matrix).But ants? Ants, now they get along. Not only do they get along, but they're all about the comradery. Giving oneself up for the greater good. There is no I in team. That's ants.In 2007 a popular article floated around the world, and the internet, when humans discovered how selfless ants can bee. Pictures of ants running to find food, with the ones finding pot holes immediately filling up the hole with their own bodies. That's what I call taking one for the team. If you missed out on this great story, be sure to read Living plugs: smooth ant journey But now, I've found out - ants consider themselves much more than hole-fillers. Humans came up with a great number of ideas when it came to crossing various precipices: hanging bridges made of vines, which later became rope and wooden planks, then later steel cables with wooden planks, eventually just steel girders. We went so far as to even creating University courses and giving people degrees just so they can help us cross canyons. Ants though - ants decided, why use wood or steel, when you can use yourself?And so now we are finding that not only are ants willing to throw their bodies over a hole, so the team can run without pause (compare this to Sir Walter Raleigh, who only sacrificed his overcoat so the Queen could cross a puddle - sure it's romantic, but ladies, wouldn't you prefer a man to toss his entire self over that puddle so you can - quite literally - walk all over him?) but they're also willing to let themselves be used as make-shift bridges. The idea is simple, yet bold: Don't bring equipment, just bring yourselves (and a lot of friends)!But then, maybe there's something to us humans. We brought rope and wood, because we felt: "Hey, let's get everyone across this chasm. I'm tired of always stepping on Joey! He's such a good kid! Let's come up with a way that we can all cross, without some of us plummeting to our death when arms get tired." But any idea for comradery was immediately crushed when we did cross that chasm with our rope and wood bridge, just to kill the people on the other side of the chasm.The fact is, ants get along in a way we humans will never understand. We consider ourselves the most intelligent creatures on Earth. Moreover, we'll kill each other to prove that the people living on this land mass, are smarter than the people living on that land mass - and as we build our bridge, we watch those silly little ants building their own bridge out of themselves. Being the smart creatures we are, we immediately assume that any other creature of intelligence must therefore be like us. So we call them Army Ants, convinced their building bridges purely to wage war. Meanwhile, the ants on both land masses are working together building a very long ant-bridge, so they can move around freely - and likely, without Passports.I wish there was some lesson to be learned from all this, but I'm convinced any lesson here would just be lost on us. The ants don't need the lesson. They already get it. And we humans are only able to look at them, and smile at their silly Engineering. Eventually we get bored, and then we step on their sand-houses, and watch them frantically scurry around to reconstruct their house - just so that we can crush it again, passing the time while we await instructions on which human house to crush next.Thanks ants. Thants.