All about Ant Farms: Why They Are Cruel and Why You Shouldn’t Get Them

In reality, nearly all the world is an ant farm. There are over 12,000 species of ants worldwide and somewhere in the vicinity of 20 quadrillion individuals. Ants live worldwide and especially thrive in warmer climates.

Ants are excellent communicators, renowned for their size-to-strength ratio, and (some are) notorious for their bites. They use all of these talents being amazing engines of the forests and fields, helping to cycle waste into new fertility.

Many ants are actually, perhaps ironically, fantastic farmers. Some ants farm and “milk” aphids. Other ants are skilled mushroom growers, pruning plants to feed the mycelium they have cultivated. Ants have been farming far longer than humans!

What is a real shame is that, over the last 60 or more years, humans have been celebrating ant farms rather than those farming ants.

Source: LegendofPanchoBarnes/YouTube

The History of Ant Farms

Ant farms date back to the mid-20^th century. Milton Levine, commonly called Uncle Milt, is credited with inventing them. The basic idea is that sand is kept between two glass walls so that we can see what ants are doing inside the “farm”.

While many have promoted this “toy” as a great educational tool for young children, that notion may be gravely mistaken. The truth of the matter is that ant farms, and more specifically ants, are not toys. Ants are living creatures.

When questioned about the farms being abusive, many fans of the ant farm will cite that the ants within them are not being harmed. However, it is likely in need of revisiting with a modern, more compassionate outlook. The ant farm certainly disrupts the natural lives of ants.

Why Ant Farms Are Cruel

Many of us have come to recognize confining animals, domestic or wild, to small cages as cruel. Many now reject factory farms where chickens are raised and kept in tiny cages. Confining pet dogs or cats in small cages for hours is illegal in some states. Caging wild animals like tigers and bears has fallen even further out of fashion.

Ants, too, are wild animals that don’t deserve to live their lives confined to cages, even if they seem to us to be content. In reality, ants move over huge areas and live in large, social colonies They have important roles within those colonies and functions in the larger ecosystem. This is what makes an ant an ant.

Ants are not pets. Pets are domesticated animals capable of building a relationship with humans. Like other wild animals such as snakes and lizards, ants are mistakenly viewed as pets because people have decided to keep them in cages. In essence, ant farms and the ants in them are simply misplaced, becoming engines of commerce, not ecology.

Source: The Planet Voice/YouTube

Don’t Get Ant Farms

It may seem trivial to some to compare the mistreatment of an ant to that of a chicken or dog, but ants (and other insects) are animals, too. They have purposeful lives and connections with other animals. They have important functions—soil production, seed distribution, waste cycling, aerating soil, etc.—within the ecosystems in which they live.

Just as we wouldn’t want to keep a butterfly in a jar until it dies, we shouldn’t feel okay with doing that do ant, should we? While some may feel the need to protect a home or yard, justifying going so far as killing them (many do not feel this way), trapping them in a confined space and forcing them to live as involuntary entertainment is something wholly different than that.

Buying into ant farms is buying into a world where we don’t value wild animals’ right to live their natural existence. More so, it’s buying into actively participating in that devaluation. Regardless of whether or not ants are “harmed”, that shouldn’t sit well with environmentalists, animal advocates, or anyone.

Being an Ant(imal) Activist

Choosing not to buy, promote, or condone ant farms is a way we can all be ant and animal activists. Valuing the life of other animals and making a conscious effort to protect them is an important part of fighting for this planet. We—plants, animals, fungi, etc.—have evolved to work, survive, and thrive together. It’s when we forget this that things start to go really wrong.

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