No, they aren’t snakes – but they are just... - All The Good Seed Daily Devotionals for 2025

A viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that its rider shall fall backward.
Genesis 49:17

No, they aren’t snakes – but they are just as deceitful and cunning. Ant lions, their larvae about 1.7 cm in size, build funnels 3 cm deep and 8 cm wide and burrow into their bases. Ants that walk past the funnel slip inside, are paralysed by them, and are then eaten.

To build the funnel, the insects use only small grains of sand. Larger ones are flung by them up to 30 cm away. But this makes the funnel particularly slippery, because small grains slide on slopes more easily than larger ones. Obviously, the insects know about this physical phenomenon. They also build from the outside in, an optimal digging technique. They need less than half an hour for the construction – then the table is set and the meal can come.

Have the insects determined through comparative studies that building a funnel from the outside in is particularly effective? How do they know that a slope is more slippery when the larger stones are removed? How did they learn this and how did it become ingrained in their genetic makeup?

Few animals set traps for other animals. Those that do so usually use their own body material, like spiders with their threads and webs. Ant lions, on the other hand, use foreign material to set a trap, a procedure which otherwise only humans have mastered!

The Bible says that creation will one day be made free “from the bondage of corruption”. If in this day of a ruined creation things appear so beautiful and so intelligently designed, how perfect must it have been at the beginning, when everything was still “very good”! (Romans 8:21; Genesis 1:31)

Today’s reading: Genesis 5:21-32 · 1 Peter 3:1-7