Nature has some pretty strange systems to deal with death - here's a really unusual one

1. Which is the best way to die?
A recent notice in London’s Natural History Museum
generated headlines with its no-nonsense style. By
combining an explanation of the near-empty leaf-cutter
ant exhibit with a bit of natural history science, the
museum’s stark message has got people talking.
The sign reads: ‘The queen ant has died’ before going to
explain ‘When this happens the colony fails to survive.
The worker ants are in the process of dismantling the
fungus and garden nests, then they will also die.’ At the
end there is a positive note ‘We are waiting for our new
queen to arrive!’
Although some have found the message bleak, all it
really does is explain something that to leaf cutter ants
is, presumably, perfectly natural. We don’t know if
these insects anticipate the extinction of their colony,
or whether they mind when it happens but we can be
fairly certain that our own reaction to the situation is
not an ant reaction. The job of the Natural History
Museum is not, after all, to make us feel sorry for
animals but to explain how natural history works. The
demise of an ant colony is something that must happen
every day somewhere in the world, but it always has
happened and it always will. If humans want to
respond to the death of animals, it is probably more
important that we look at those deaths we should – and
could – prevent.
It is also worth considering the wider context. Life can’t
go on without death. If no leaf-cutter ant colonies
failed, then the world would be unable to sustain the
leaf-cutter ant population. Nature insists on death,
though not always in the complicated and unusual way
we see here. We all know intellectually that death is an
inevitable and unavoidable part of life but we find it
hard to accept it for ourselves and our loved ones. We
know that animals die all the time but when we see the
kind of wholesale death exemplified by the ants, it
brings us up short. So the question is, which is better;
the communal death of the ants, self-determined and
organised, or our own precarious and uncertain future?
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