"Typically, when a person spots a carpenter ant inside the home, they assume the worst. They fear a swarming, thriving ant colony is breeding within the house. This is rarely the case. Carpenter ants live in hollow trees, logs, landscaping timbers, and soil, and will march hundreds of metres from their colony in search of food."
So think about that for a moment. What is a "hollow tree" or a wood frame wall with two sheets of drywall on either side? The Ants may think it is a particularly square hollow tree but hey, its warm, its hollow.
And the 'hundreds of meters in search of food' but they also don't "pass up" food. So for you too see an Ant in your kitchen you know that between where that ant lives, and your kitchen, they didn't find any food yet. That can be explained by a particularly sterile yard, or the home is between your kitchen and the yard. And what else it between your kitchen and the yard, why yes, that warm hollow space known as a wood frame wall.
All of that being said, ants (and many other insects) are machines. Very much like bacterium with all wheel drive capability. They eat, they reproduce, they die. They convert low level sugars into a complex carbohydrates that birds and other vertebrates use to fuel their own growth. And like a machine, they can be running where they aren't needed. So is it some act of bad faith to turn off your car? No it is not. We need look no further than other ant colonies, which, when they detect ants in their home that are not expected to be there, they mercilessly and without delay slaughter them. The machine doesn't care that its elements are processing food other things want, and turning off the machine by neutralizing its agents doesn't incur any 'bad karma.'
You claim insects are like "machines" that "mercilessly slaughter". If insects have no sentient attributes like mercy, how can they slaughter others mercilessly?
If insects have no sentient attributes like mercy, how can they slaughter others mercilessly?
Easy. Since they lack attributes like mercy, they slaughter without it. That is to say, they slaughter mercilessly.
And, really, In the context of creatures without mercy, such a phrase can alternatively be viewed as a literary device comparing how the ants act to how a human acts. I'm not sure what the term would be... personification? E.g., "The trees wept".
"Typically, when a person spots a carpenter ant inside the home, they assume the worst. They fear a swarming, thriving ant colony is breeding within the house. This is rarely the case. Carpenter ants live in hollow trees, logs, landscaping timbers, and soil, and will march hundreds of metres from their colony in search of food."
So think about that for a moment. What is a "hollow tree" or a wood frame wall with two sheets of drywall on either side? The Ants may think it is a particularly square hollow tree but hey, its warm, its hollow.
And the 'hundreds of meters in search of food' but they also don't "pass up" food. So for you too see an Ant in your kitchen you know that between where that ant lives, and your kitchen, they didn't find any food yet. That can be explained by a particularly sterile yard, or the home is between your kitchen and the yard. And what else it between your kitchen and the yard, why yes, that warm hollow space known as a wood frame wall.
All of that being said, ants (and many other insects) are machines. Very much like bacterium with all wheel drive capability. They eat, they reproduce, they die. They convert low level sugars into a complex carbohydrates that birds and other vertebrates use to fuel their own growth. And like a machine, they can be running where they aren't needed. So is it some act of bad faith to turn off your car? No it is not. We need look no further than other ant colonies, which, when they detect ants in their home that are not expected to be there, they mercilessly and without delay slaughter them. The machine doesn't care that its elements are processing food other things want, and turning off the machine by neutralizing its agents doesn't incur any 'bad karma.'