Carpenter ants

Carpenter ants enter the book as a collective in a fungus–animal relationship: an account connects them with Cordyceps and describes the fungus eliminating a carpenter-ant colony. The ants’ significance lies in this encounter, which places them within the book’s broader attention to fungi and animal life.

Place in the Book

The index directs readers to carpenter ants in two stretches of the book, pages 89 and 96–97. Cordyceps is indexed in connection with page 89, locating the ant reference within the discussion of fungi and their relations with other organisms.

The Cordyceps Connection

The book identifies Cordyceps as the fungus that eliminates a carpenter-ant colony. The episode’s framing is collective: the ants appear as a colony affected by a fungal presence, not as separately characterized individuals. The available account does not specify the mechanism or describe the ants’ behavior, so the connection rests on the stated outcome and the broader fungus–animal context.

Narrative Significance

The carpenter ants mark a shift in scale from human accounts of psychedelics and fungi to a nonhuman relationship. Their place in the book is brief but concrete: an ant colony becomes the subject of an encounter in which fungi are not merely background, but an active part of the relation being described.