Beautiful ant towers up on Danes Hill this morning as I came home from work. Both black and red ants working their asses off on their respective nests. Love is in the air and so will a shit-ton of winged ants soon be too (Man, that was a poorly constructed sentence).

The hive mating season kicks off by a method that’s as simple as it is elegant and ancient: a warm day with little wind means scent travels easily and the hives can smell one another’s hormones. Why elegant? Because a warm windless day is exactly the sort of weather the weak-winged and flight-inexperienced flying ants can just about handle.

Ant mating season: old as the Cretaceous. It’s like the Battle Of Britain meets the Karma Sutra. Rather puts we upright apes’ brutish mating rituals to shame. But, hey, we haven’t been around all that long..