title: Ants at Work: How an Insect Society is Organized
author:  Deborah Gordon 
description: Deborah Gordon is associate professor of biology at Stanford University.
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  # PSYCHE AND THE PSKYSCRAPER
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### O Henry
  
  
  If you are a philosopher you can do this thing: you can go to the
  
  
  top of a high building, look down upon your fellow-men 300 feet
  
  
  below, and despise them as insects. Like the irresponsible black
  
  
  waterbugs on summer ponds, they crawl and circle and hustle about
  
  
  idiotically without aim or purpose. They do not even move with the
  
  
  admirable intelligence of ants, for ants always know when they are
  
  
  going home. The ant is of a lowly station, but he will often reach
  
  
  home and get his slippers on while you are left at your elevated
  
  
  station.
  
  
  Man, then, to the housetopped philosopher, appears to be but a
  
  
  creeping, contemptible beetle. Brokers, poets, millionaires,
  
  
  bootblacks, beauties, hod-carriers and politicians become little
  
  
  black specks dodging bigger black specks in streets no wider than
  
  
  your thumb.
  
  
  From this high view the city itself becomes degraded to an
  