Ants
and the
Humans
Who Love Them
Bernard Werber’s Les Fourmis Trilogy
MATAN SHELOMI
“In the few seconds necessary for you
to read these four lines:
40 humans and 700 million ants
are being born on Earth
30 humans and 500 million ants
are dying on Earth.”
S
o read the first words of French science fiction
writer Bernard Werber’s 1991 novel Les Fourmis [The Ants], available in an English translation as Empire of the Ants (not to be confused with
the 1977 B-movie of the same name). It is the first of a
series of increasingly longer and more involved novels
commonly known as the Les Fourmis trilogy (Fig. 1).
The second and third books, Le Jour des fourmis [The
Day of the Ants; 1992] (Fig. 2), and La Révolution des
fourmis [The Revolution of the Ants; 1996] (Fig. 3) have
not been translated into English at this time, making
them inaccessible to myrmecophiles who cannot read
French or the other foreign language versions of them
that do exist. That’s a pity, because Werber’s Ants trilogy
is a remarkable work that fancifully blends the human
and formicidine worlds, using the latter as a lens to
critically analyze the former, and is a delight for any
entomologist. Deviating from common science fiction
tropes, the Ants trilogy doesn’t demonize ants or use
them solely as monsters of the week, nor does it overly
anthropomorphize them. On the contrary, the ants are
appreciated for what they are, as the reader is invited
to think as they do and see the world through their
ocelli: a case of species relativism that comes surprisingly naturally through the pages. If you ever wondered
how ants perceive humans, or what religion or rebellion or romance could look like in an ant colony, this
is your chance for an imaginative yet oddly plausible
interpretation. Here I will focus on how Werber depicts
both insects and entomologists throughout the trilogy,
and try to condense his conclusions and the lessons
to be learned from his novels (particularly the latter
two) for those of you unable to read them. For those
of you who can, spoilers will be at a minimum and
come with warning.
A Brief Synopsis
Empire of the Ants/Les Fourmis starts with two parallel
story lines set in the modern era. The first is that of Jonathan Wells, Homo sapiens, who has inherited a house
from his late uncle, the famed myrmecologist Edmond
Wells (whose name appears to be a dual homage to
sci-fi author H.G Wells, who wrote the unrelated short
Fig. 1. Cover art for the first book in the Ants trilogy Les
Fourmis by Bernard Werber:
208
Note: All quotations in this article have been translated from the
original French by the author.
American Entomologist • Winter 2013
story “Empire of the Ants” in 1905, and reallife myrmecologist Edward O. Wilson, author
of the unrelated non-fiction opus The Ants,
1990). Little by little, he begins to discover
the more revolutionary writings of his uncle
and slowly grows obsessed with the mystery
of the basement, the one part of the home he
has been given explicit instructions to never,
ever enter. The other story is that of 327th male,
Formica rufa, who lives in the central city of Belo-kan, the most powerful Federation of ants in
the entire known world (which is actually just
the Forest of Fontainebleau in the greater Paris
metroplitan area). Not long after coming out of
hibernation, 327th male accidentally stumbles on
the annihilation of an expedition of twenty-eight
workers. Though he blames Bel-o-kan’s enemies,
a colony of Iridomyrmex humilis, he is unable
to convince others of what happened, including
his matriarch, Belo-kiu-kiuni, the latest queen in
a 5,000-year-old dynasty. Together with allies he
makes along the way—56th female reproductive,
and 103683rd soldier—he attempts to uncover a
conspiracy that threatens the entire colony.
Spoiler alert: while the two plotlines are kept distinct at first, near the end they suddenly intersect by
way of a device Edmond Wells had been working on
in secret called the “Rosetta Stone.” Using computers
connected to a system of gas chromatographs, mass
spectrometers, and chemical emitters and detectors,
Edmond had created the world’s first French-to-Formicidae translator. As ants communicate through olfaction and not sound, the machine converts typewritten words into the appropriate pheromone bouquet
(For example: Methyl-4 methylpyrole-2 carboxylate
for “apple”), and emits them in small quantities at a
waiting ant, whose responses are aspirated, analyzed
for their chemical composition, and translated into
text on a monitor. The book treats us to some of the
early conversations between Wells and his ants, most
of which involve silent exclamations of “Au secours!
[Help!]” as the ants suffocate from the machine’s overly
concentrated chemical emissions.
The other books follow in the pattern of the first, with
ant and human storylines marching in parallel toward
an inevitable intersection. In Le Jour des fourmis, Belo-kan’s new queen, Chli-pou-ni, does not share her
predecessor’s tolerance of humans—referred to as “les
Doigts [the Fingers]” after the only part of a human that
ants can perceive with their limited vision. She organizes a massive crusade to wipe out all the Fingers of
the world (who she estimates can’t number more than
two dozen), and chooses 103683rd soldier, from the first
book, to lead the army. At the same time, she must contend with a rebellion threatening the superorganismic
American Entomologist • Volume 59, Number 4
Fig. 2. Cover art for the second book in the Ants trilogy, Le
Jour des Fourmis.
Fig. 3. Cover art for the third book in the Ants trilogy, titled
La Révolution des Fourmis.
solidarity of Bel-o-kan, with an unprecedented twist:
the rebels have somehow discovered the concept of
religion, and believe the Fingers are their gods. They
don’t seem to know what a god is, but they accept that
the Fingers fit the category. At the same time, Paris is
rocked by a string of mysterious murders. The victims
are all chemists, killed in their homes behind locked
doors with no signs of forced entry, and all bearing the
same expression of absolute horror on their faces. In
the course of his investigation, Commissaire Jacques
Méliès repeatedly finds himself crossing paths with
journalist Laetitia Wells, daughter of Edmond Wells
and cousin to Jonathan from the first book.
Finally, La Révolution des fourmis is the longest
book in the series, and perhaps the most convoluted.
As the name suggests, it deals with the topic of societal revolutions, about which the French are quite fond
of writing. This book explores what humans can learn
from the ants (harmony with nature, absence of fear,
etc.), and what ants can learn from humans (humor,
art, and love). This time, the two parallel storylines feature characters trying to change their respective societies, seeking inspiration from their civilization-building
heterospecifics. The main human is Julie Pinson, a shy
high school student who doesn’t quite fit in, whose life
changes when she becomes the lead singer in a literal
209
band of misfits. She soon finds herself orchestrating
an ambitious “Revolution of the Ants,” with the goal of
nonviolently changing the world for the better based
on the formicidine way of life and the teachings of her
new favorite author, Edmond Wells. Meanwhile, a “Revolution of the Fingers” is being planned for Bel-O-Kan,
with the goals of improving the colony by emulating the
humans. Spoiler alert: The instigator is 103683rd soldier, who survives the Crusade against the Fingers and
is the only character to prominently feature in all three
books. She believes the ants have much to learn from
humans, and is particularly intrigued by the concepts
of humor, art, and love that she learned about during
her adventures. Her priority, however, is getting home
to Bel-O-Kan to warn them of an impending threat. To
make matters worse, at three years old, the 103683rd
soldier is nearing the end of her lifespan, so she decides
to take drastic measures to prolong her existence.
Throughout all of the books, between the chapters
are quoted entries from L’Encyclopédie Du Savoir Relatif
Et Absolu [The Encyclopedia of Relative and Absolute
Knowledge]: a multi-volume tome full of scientific, historical, philosophical, and metaphysical concepts that
makes repeated references to ants whenever possible.
The author is (as you’ve probably guessed) Edmond
Wells, and his Encyclopédie is cited in the books as being
his greatest gift to humanity, containing within its pages
all that humankind needs to know. These interchapters
tie the human and ant storylines together, provide an
interpretation of the current action unfolding, or simply
are informative entomological trivia, particularly when
a new insect or ant behavior is introduced in the story
(e.g., a detailed description of bedbug sexual behavior,
or the cestode life cycle in an ant host). Each book in
the trilogy references a different “volume” of the Encyclopédie, the third of which figures prominently in La
Révolution des fourmis as the catalytic source of information and inspiration for Julie Pinson and her revolution. For the curious, compilations of the Encyclopédie
can be found online, and it was even published as a
stand-alone book by Werber in 1993 and again in 2003
as the “Nouvelle” edition (again, no English translation
of the book exists).
The Formicidine Characters
The depictions of the ants will satisfy all but the most
exacting myrmecologist. Of course, the ants in the trilogy
are much more intelligent than real ants, with a greatly expanded vocabulary, yet I would not say they are
anthropomorphized. They are still unmistakably ants,
with all that goes with being a nameless subunit in a
colony of millions. The intricacies of ant behavior are
depicted in loving detail, with the only addition being
a limited amount of emotional and cognitive power.
When an ant needs to kill another insect for food, it
does so without hesitating and neither does the book
(which is quite jarring for a reader used to human fiction, where murder usually comes with some deliberation or at least a witty one-liner). In these books, we
experience vicariously the pleasure of a trophylaxis, the
210
taste of a well-fermented leaf, the speed of communication through olfaction, and the indignity of a liver fluke
infection—waking up each morning on top of a blade
of grass and not remembering how you got there. No
more emotional power is provided to the ants beyond
the minimum necessary to make characters out of them.
The concepts of “fear” or “me” or “I” do not exist: when
they do, they are seen as some troubling mental illness.
For example, when an ant is lost and unable to detect
any trail pheromones, it experiences neither fear nor
panic, but rather a dilute form of annoyance with itself
and the onward march to regain the piste.
Most famous from the books is the fanciful assertion that, in the ant world, 1+1=3. Why? Because ants,
being eusocial insects, firmly believe that the whole is
greater than the sum of its parts. (For the record, it is
possible to “prove” mathematically that 1+1=3, but the
proof is a logical fallacy that requires division by zero).
The biggest deviation from entomological fact is Belo-kan itself, which, if it existed, would be the most
sophisticated ant colony on earth. The “Federation,”
though lead by Formica rufa, is comprised of a wide
assortment of insect species engaged in their own particular specialties (listed in an appendix at the end). Belo-kan includes honeypot ants (Myrmecocystus melliger),
harvesters (Messor barbarus), fungus gardeners (Atta
sexdens), and even slavemakers (Polyergus rufescens), all
living in harmony among its ranks, and further maintains stables of aphids, bedbugs, and scarab beetles for
food or as mercenaries during battles with non-aligned
ant colonies and the termites, their perennial nemeses.
The advances and symbioses reach a ridiculous level
in Révolution, when wasps and snails join the alliance
and when the colony attempts, somewhat successfully,
to utilize the forbidden tool of the Fingers: fire.
The Bel-o-kanians are also impossibly aggressive.
In one scene in Les Fourmis, the ants attack and kill
an insectivorous bird threatening the nest by crawling
up its cloaca and chewing their way to its brain. More
ridiculous is the assertion given in Le Jour des Fourmis
that the ants used the same methods to kill the dinosaurs—all of them. These rare flights of fancy and the
occasional urban legend passing as truth are forgivable,
given that the series exhibits extraordinarily accurate
entomology for a novel of the science fiction genre.
Werber’s depictions of insect enthusiasts are similarly based in realism and—in a change from the
pith-helmeted, antisocial weirdo or mutagen-armed
madperson stereotypes of media entomologists—positive. Perhaps this stems from France’s long history of
accepting insect-observing as a layperson avocation,
exemplified in the popularity of the works of Jean-Henri
Fabre. A real-world entomologist could easily see him
or herself in the human characters of the Ants trilogy:
consider the second book’s Laetitia Wells, who, despite
being a professional journalist, still actively studies ants
as a hobby. Perhaps the most telling proof that Werber interacted with real entomologists when writing
this book is how perfectly he captured the infectious
nature of our passions: even the most entomophobic
American Entomologist • Winter 2013
individual can learn to love and be amazed by insects
simply by being exposed to the trivia of how ants work
and of what amazing feats they are capable. The entomologists and entomophiles in this book rarely fail in
convincing others that their tiny charges deserve respect
rather than a run for the insecticide spray, be it through
personal interaction or, in the case of Edmond Wells,
a compellingly written compendium.
Style and Substance
Werber’s writing style emphasizes seamless transitions.
In each book, the twin storylines unfold simultaneously, often with little to no warning that the action has
shifted: one chapter ends with a human running, and
the next starts with an ant running, but you only realize
that the protagonist has changed when you wonder why
the human is running in pitch darkness underground
past the aphid stables. The technique is effective. You
find yourself caring as much for the individual ants as
you do for the humans among them, which you may
regret as death in Werber’s ants’ world is as frequent
and sudden as it is in the real ant world.
As is typical for French literature (or so I’ve been told),
the ultimate goal of the trilogy is to pessimistically comment on the human condition. Werber does this in two
ways. The first is through the interstitial excerpts from the
Encyclopédie, presenting unflattering segments of human
history and culture (the Crusades, death cults, etc) that
complement the human-insect interactions unfolding
in the adjacent chapters. Little imagination is needed
to interpret the immensely powerful and arrogant federation of Bel-o-kan as a European colonialist empire,
quite secure in their belief that they are the dominant
form of life on earth. Occasionally the ant leitmotif in
the Encyclopédie’s entries seems a bit forced: imagine
a dictionary in which nearly every noun (education,
totalitarianism, cleanliness) is given an entomological
example, often with the undercurrent that the insect
interpretation is superior to ours. While this is informative, at some point one will wonder if the encylopedia’s
author had some sort of bias towards a particular clade
of life. (Would an ornithologist or bacteriologist have
been able to tie their field to the universe and human
history quite as easily or thoroughly?)
The other method is more direct: the insects themselves are making the comments. As expected, the
different arthropod orders depicted in the novels have
differing opinions of the Fingers. The bees’ tenet is
“ignore them and they’ll ignore you.” The cockroaches
believe that the Fingers worship them: why else would
the Fingers keep putting piles of edibles in giant altars
at regular intervals? For the ants of Bel-o-kan, any opinions of the Fingers (tolerance, hatred, or worship) are
rooted in ignorance and their own precept of being the
superior species—a blatant jab at our own attitudes
toward ants, not to mention other humans.
If you really want an amusing read, persevere until
the latter part of Le Jour des fourmis. Spoiler alert:
our trusty heroine, the 103683rd soldier, finds herself
responsible for saving the lives of several humans,
American Entomologist • Volume 59, Number 4
but must first decide if she feels the Fingers are worth
saving or, as per her queen’s orders, exterminating.
The human protagonists, communicating with this ant
via an aformentioned Rosetta Stone machine, decide
the best way to help her impartially judge humanity
is to give her access to television. With a minimized
screen, a tiny remote control, and the audio output
converted to pheromones, the ant heroine peruses all
of human culture, asking questions and taking notes
in the form of droplets of pheromones. Her interpretations of human behavior, physiology, and technical
achievements are amusing, to say the least. (Some highlights: “The female Fingers are incapable of choosing
the sex, caste, or form of their offspring. Each birth is
a surprise.” “Sometimes, the Fingers eat not because
they are hungry but because they are bored.” “The Fingers do not know how to clean themselves with their
saliva.” “The Fingers figure that the earth is round and
revolves around the sun!”)
The three parts of the trilogy each represent the
three stages of when two civilizations come together.
The first book deals with first contact: what happens
when humans and ants go beyond merely being aware
of each other’s existence and begin to interact and communicate. The theme of the second is confrontation:
when two civilizations meet, the default consequence
is competition and hostility. The third book is about
cooperation: ideally, the two populations will realize
that they are stronger when they learn from each other,
each adopting beneficial aspects from the other and
advancing by thinking differently. This idealism connects directly to the idea of 1+1=3 that repeats in the
books. Ultimately, the theme of the books [both Werber’s
Fourmis and Wells’ Encyclopédie trilogies] is described
as “comprehension between different civilizations and
the human place in space and time.”
Another common feature is puzzles. In each novel,
a riddle is introduced at the beginning of the book, to
be answered by the end, with the reveal that Edmond
Wells uses these riddles as examples of how one must
change how one thinks to solve problems and re-evaluate the human context in the world. The puzzles are as
follows: How does one make four equilateral triangles
using six matchsticks of equal length without cutting
or bending them? Next, how does one make six equilateral triangles using the same six whole matchsticks?
Lastly, how does one make eight equilateral triangles
using six unbroken matchsticks? Though the answers
are in the book, I won’t include them here. I will only
give you the hint Werber/Wells gives: Il faut penser différemment [It is necessary to think differently].
The Development of the Ants Trilogy
According to Werber’s official webpage (www.
bernardwerber.com), Les Fourmis was a multi-year
effort (Fig. 2). His first book, it is the product of diligent
daily writing since he was sixteen (Werber was born in
1961). He describes it as a seed, which is an accurate
descriptor. Not only did the other two books arise from
it, but so did the rest of Werber’s work. The structure
211
de Paris. He worked as a scientific journalist for several
papers; his first notable work (for which he won the
Prix de la Foundation News for best young reporter)
of narratives interspersed
described the migrations of Ivory Coast army ants,
with encyclopedia articles
which he studied by working alongside entomologist
written by a polymath
Jean-Marie Leroux. Indeed, while he may have changed
author as his last great
topics since finishing the Ants trilogy, Werber repeatedly returned to the ants that he had spent the most
contribution to humanity is used repeatedly (an
time researching and to his favorite fictional scientist,
architecture Werber says
Edmond Wells.
was inspired by Frank
By 1990, Les Fourmis was 1,463 pages long, featuring
Herbert’s Dune series).
eight battles and exceedingly thorough descriptions of
Following Les Fourmis is
the environments and backgrounds, but Werber reduced
the five-part Thanatonaut
this length to 350 pages on advice of his editor, Albin
series, which features sciMichel. In the edit, Werber emphasized the surprendre:
entists exploring the Cona type of textual hypnosis meant to fire the readers’
tinent of the Afterlife (in
imaginations and catch their attention. Exposition was
which Angels take the role
replaced with suspense, and the technique of montage was used to create the aformentioned transitions.
of the ants of Les Fourmis
Why the attention to biology? In his online biograby providing commentary
phy, Werber writes that the original draft of Les Fouron human society’s differences from their own).
mis was indeed naïve, with ants living in aluminum
This was followed by the Père de nos pères [Father of
foil nests. While studying ants, however, Werber realized that the truth was stranger than fiction, and that
our Fathers] trilogy, which focuses on human origins
drawing only from the behaviors and features of real
and Werber’s interpretation of the putative missing
link. His later works deal heavily with the paranormal ants provided more than enough possibilities for his
book. In truth, realism was key to Werber’s image of his
and alien abduction.
story. Basing his novels in entomological fact added a
However, while the construction of the novels is similar, no overarching philosophy or scientific theory conlevel of mystique to the story (in his words, “plus c’est
nects the works. What is Bernard Werber’s endgame? vrai plus c’est magique [the more it is true, the more
While Werber himself (Fig. 4) may believe in the parait is magical]”). Werber writes in his online biography
normal, he seems more concerned with depicting amus(http://www.bernardwerber.com/bio/biographie_plus.
ing anecdotes from history and zoological trivia than html) that he was never interested in the typical scimaking any broad, sweeping claims about humanity. ence-fiction fantasies of robots and rockets and lasers,
thinking them to be merely Westerns set in the future.
The Thanatonaut trilogy contains factoids about the
To him, true science fiction is practiced at the level of
religious and funerary practices of the world’s cultures,
ideas and morals. The problems of today need not be
and Père de nos pères contains findings from paleontology, genetics, and medicine. The extent of Werber’s shown solved by future technology, but by contempopolitical leanings can be gleaned from his description rary ideas—and what better source of inspiration and
guide for “penser différemment” than the ants? They
of La Révolution des fourmis. His goal in that novel is to
have roads with no traffic jams, but no traffic laws. All
depict a quiet, non-violent revolution that could be used
resources are communal; there is no pollution because
to escape the system of castes that he feels is paralyzing modern French society. Werber describes himself they spend a third of their time cleaning; there is no
as an agnostic and an anarchist, believing that individoverpopulation because the queen selects her progeny
uals should be responsible for themaccording to the needs of the colony:
selves and free to do what they need
the ants provide a possible model for
to do without being told. He rejects all
Werber’s utopia.
dogma, government, mentors, superWhy a trilogy? The public did not
stitions, groups, philosophies, police,
react to Les Fourmis the way Werber
and systems of reward or punishment,
wanted. For one thing, many journalists at the time assumed Werber was
but acknowledges that a perfect system
American, because the French considof education and citizenship is needed
ered fantasy novels to be Anglo-Saxon.
before his personal utopia devoid of
The sci-fi purists rejected the book prethese can come to pass.
cisely because it had a contemporary
Werber’s early life sheds light on his
setting. Most annoying to Werber was
preferred writing style. As he was writing Les Fourmis, he also studied forenthat people began to look to him as an
sic science at the Toulouse Institute of Fig. 5. Box art for the “Empire of the authority on ants, when what he really
Ants” videogame from 2000, by the
Criminology, and then journalism at French software company Microïdes, wanted was to talk about humanity.
the École Supérieure de Journalisme based on the book.
So he published Jour des Fourmis in
Fig. 4. Bernard Werber, author
of the Ants trilogy. From www.
bernardwerber.com.
212
American Entomologist • Winter 2013
1992 with an emphasis on philosophy. He had even
hoped someone would make a movie based on it, and
considers the 1998 American film Antz a shameless ripoff of his ideas. Révolution was written in 1995 during a
period of depression, and it delves heavily into politics,
though it doesn’t promote any particular point of view.
In retrospect, Révolution is rather prophetic, in that Werber predicted the major role the Internet would play in
modern revolutionary movements.
International Reception
While it may not have left much of a legacy in the
English-speaking world (why only one book has been
translated into English while all three have been translated into other languages, such as German, is a mystery to me), the Ants trilogy has its fans. In 2000, a
real-time-strategy PC video game version of the first
book was released, in which the player takes on the
role of a Bel-o-kanian ant tasked with defending the
colony from predators and invaders. A French power
metal band named “Bel O Kan” exists, with ant-themed
albums and album covers. More recently, a Korean firm
announced a $25 million CGI film version of Empire of
the Ants, to be released in 2014 in English. (The trailer
premiered in Cannes in 2012.) Werber himself visited
South Korea in 1993, and writes that the Koreans originally promoted Les Fourmis as poetry rather than as
the “fantasy” genre assigned to it by Europeans.
Empire of the Ants is a highly engaging first-person
look into how the myrmicine world works, and highly
recommended for any Formicidae fan. The books that
follow in the trilogy are arguably better; however, if you
find yourself limited to the English version, consider
this as good an excuse as any to learn that second or
third language you’ve always wanted.
Acknowledgements
I thank the ESA Editorial staff for their assistance and
review of this manuscript. I also thank my French
teachers from junior high school onward for making
all of this possible!
References Cited
Werber, B. 1991. Les Fourmis. Livre de Poche, Librairie
Générale Française, Paris.
Werber, B. 1992. Le Jour des Fourmis. Livre de Poche, Librairie Générale Française, Paris.
Werber, B. 1996. La Révolution des Fourmis. Livre de Poche,
Librairie Générale Française, Paris.
Werber, B. 1999. Empire of the Ants. Bantam, London.
Werber, B. 2003. L’Encyclopédie du savoir relatif et absolu. Livre de Poche, Librairie Générale Française, Paris.
Matan Shelomi received his B.A. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Entomology at the University of
California–Davis.
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