01The sign
In the Quran worker ants do not have any wings and are all females. Skeptics claim that whoever wrote the Quran made a mistake; worker ants are both males and females. Today scientists confirm that worker ants do not have any wings and are all females.
Most male ants have wings; but wingless males do not forage outside their nests.
02Scientific evidence
Ergatomorph wingless males in Technomyrmex vitiensis Mann
Ergatomorph wingless males are known in several species of the genus Technomyrmex Mayr, 1872. The first record of these males is given in T. vitiensis Mann, 1921. In comparison with winged males, wingless males have a smaller thorax and genitalia, but both forms have ocelli and the same size of eyes. Wingless males seem to form a substantial portion (more than 10%) of all adults in examined colony fragments.
Wingless males are present in colonies during the whole year, whereas the presence of winged males seems to be limited by season. Wingless males do not participate in the taking care of the brood and active foraging outside the nest. Males of both types possess metapleural gland openings. Beside males with normal straight scapes, strange hockey stick-like scapes have been observed in several males. The cause of this divergence is unclear.
"Wingless males do not participate in the taking care of the brood and active foraging outside the nest". Hence all wingless ants foraging outside the nests are strictly females. This was only known recently, however this was portrayed in the Quran 1400 years before it was discovered. The Quran addressed ants that cannot fly in the female mode:
03Qur'an passage · Quran 27:18
حَتَّىٰ إِذَا أَتَوْا عَلَىٰ وَادِ النَّمْلِ قَالَتْ نَمْلَةٌ يَا أَيُّهَا النَّمْلُ ادْخُلُوا مَسَاكِنَكُمْ لَا يَحْطِمَنَّكُمْ سُلَيْمَانُ وَجُنُودُهُ وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ ١٨
Until, when they came upon the valley of the ants, an ant said, "O ants, enter your homes so that you do not be crushed by Solomon and his soldiers while they do not feel it."
04Reflection
For the word "said": Kala (قال) is for males. Kalat ( قَالَتْ) is for females. The Quran used Kalat قَالَتْ (female).
If this ant had wings it would have flown off however it didn't have this option; instead its only option was to hide underground. Since it didn't have wings then this was definitely a female ant. Here the Quran correctly addressed this ant in the female mode.
Additional references
Miracles of Quran — source permissionOriginal article: Miracles of Quran, shared under the source website’s no-copyright notice. The source English above is preserved exactly; the scientific and language notes below are separate additions.
Journal of Hymenoptera Research — reuse licence
Journal of Hymenoptera Research — reuse licenceThe quoted research abstract is by Pavel Pech and Aleš Bezděk (2016), DOI 10.3897/jhr.53.8904. The article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, which permits reuse with attribution.
Scientific structure — observation, exception, interpretation
1. Observation — the worker caste
1. Observation — the worker casteA peer-reviewed review in the Journal of Experimental Biology describes workers, soldiers, ergatoid queens and queens as female ant castes. Workers are generally wingless females, while ordinary reproductive males are commonly winged. This supports the article’s central biological observation, but it is a general pattern rather than a rule without exceptions.
2. Primary evidence — a documented exception
2. Primary evidence — a documented exceptionThe source study examined Technomyrmex vitiensis colonies and documented wingless males. In one preserved colony fragment, wingless males were more than 10% of adults; they did not tend brood or actively forage outside. The study concerns one species and limited observed colonies. It supports a local behavioural observation, not the universal statement that every wingless ant seen outside every nest must be female.
3. Muslim scientific scholarship — competing readings
3. Muslim scientific scholarship — competing readingsA 2024 article in Al-Bayan, a Qur’an and tafsir journal at UIN Sunan Gunung Djati Bandung, compares five classical commentaries and a myrmecological reading. It reports that some exegetes identify the ant as female or a queen while al-Tabari and al-Qurtubi do not. This is useful Muslim scholarly evidence precisely because it records disagreement instead of presenting one interpretation as settled science.
4. Arabic grammar and tafsir — the necessary limit
4. Arabic grammar and tafsir — the necessary limitThe Quranic Arabic Corpus marks qālat as a feminine singular verb and namlatun as its subject. Arabic verbs agree with a noun’s grammatical gender; namlah is grammatically feminine because of its form. A peer-reviewed Studia Islamika analysis states that qālat is feminine because namlah has a feminine ending and that the ordinary lexical meaning is simply ‘an ant,’ regardless of biological sex. Therefore, worker-ant biology can enrich reflection on 27:18, but the feminine verb alone does not scientifically prove that the particular ant was biologically female, wingless, or a foraging worker.
05 · Ponder