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Lavish illustration is only one of the attractions of Journey to the Ants by Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson (Harvard University Press, £10.50, ISBN 0 674 48526 2). The reader may suffer a permanent case of eyebrow climb after learning so many extraordinary details about these formidable relentless insects, whose societies mirror and outclass ours. The ants may indeed survive us and take over the world – beneficently at that.