Ants and Grasshoppers

Ants and grasshoppers have long been assumed as symbiotic creatures, whose existence is assumed to bear the ups and downs of surviving together with mutual benefits gained by each other.

However, as popular as the symbiotic relationship between ants and grasshoppers is, this assumption remains to be quite false, given the fact that ants and grasshoppers don’t actually share a bond or relationship of any kind.

The Disney-Pixar animated feature A Bug’s Life, released in 1998, delved into the plight of an ant colony, whose existence was “tended to” by a group of grasshoppers. In the movie, ants were defined as workers who had to collect a regular quota of foraged food products for the grasshoppers, as the grasshoppers provided the ants with a protection insurance of some sort.

As popular as the movie was, many viewers were led into thinking that such a relationship does exist between ants and grasshoppers, without realizing that the movie’s plot was actually taken after a popular fable entitled The Ant and the Grasshopper, with the fable’s moral story telling everyone of the value of hard work and preparing ahead.

When talking about real ants and real grasshoppers, the two actually don’t share a mutual relationship or a symbiotic relationship, with each of them having their own share of survival challenges and concerns.

But the absence of this fabled mutual relationship doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean that ants and grasshoppers don’t encounter each other every now and then. However, these encounters are typically based on the pretexts of necessity, not necessarily because there is a mutual understanding shared by the two.