FASCINATING facts abound about ants: they can lift 20 times their own body weight; their average life expectancy is only 45 to 60 days, while they have been around for more than 100 million years.

As creepy-crawlies go, they are remarkably sophisticated and organised, incredibly industrious and self-sacrificing in the extreme. No wonder China’s millions during the days of Mao were labelled the “blue ants”.

But could ants ever become masters of the universe? Hardly! A colony of 40,000 ants has only collectively the same brain size of one human.