The Ant Rally

In 2013, an extraordinary protest rally took place at the zoo in Cologne, Germany. Animals of the rainforest themselves advocated the rescue of their habitat. For four days, hundreds of thousands of leafcutter ants marched through their terrarium and asked the public for support with requests like “Help”, “Solidarity” and “Ban the Saw”. Outstanding, in particular, about this call for donations, organised by the conservation organisation WWF, was that the slogans were cut into real leafs and were carried by the insects themselves as if they were banners. Far from home, these small creatures demonstrated against the deforestation of the rain forest and for the protection of species, and thus were themselves actively engaged in asserting their right to an intact habitat. While ants often use their jaws to cut leaves and then carry the pieces into their nest, the leaves for this event were punched out with slogans, thus staging an ant trail as an organised protest that attracted a lot of media attention.