Modern biology reveals a fascinating reality about several familiar creatures:
Ants: Every ant we see working outside the nest, whether foraging for food, responding to threats, or warning the colony, is a female worker.
Bees: The hive-building, honey production, brood care, and foraging are all carried out by female worker bees.
Spiders: In many web-building species, the familiar capture webs are constructed and maintained primarily by adult females, while adult males often leave the web and wander in search of mates.
Mosquitoes: It is the female mosquito that seeks out humans and other animals, bites, and feeds on blood to obtain the nutrients needed for egg development. Male mosquitoes do not visit humans for feeding; they feed on nectar and other plant sugars instead.
Interestingly, when the Qur'an refers to the ant (27:18), the bee (16:68-69), and the spider (29:41) in contexts involving their characteristic actions, it uses feminine verbs, commands, or pronouns. The mosquito (2:26) is likewise referred to using a feminine grammatical form.
From a linguistic standpoint, this usage can be explained by the conventions of Classical Arabic and the grammatical gender of these nouns. The feminine forms therefore arise naturally from the language itself. Whether the wording also intentionally reflects the biological sex of these creatures is a matter of interpretation.
Perhaps this reflects a beautiful, multi-layered design by God. The wording seems to accomplish two things simultaneously: speaking naturally to its first audience while also harmonizing with biological realities that would only become widely understood many centuries later.
1. For the first recipients of the Qur'an (Linguistic Naturalness)
The language follows the norms of Classical Arabic. For example, the word for a single bee is grammatically feminine, so the feminine commands in Surah 16 (e.g., ittakhidhī, kulī, uslukī) would have sounded entirely natural and elegant to an Arabic-speaking audience. Nothing in the wording would have seemed unusual or distracting (although we simply do not know whether some among them already recognized these biological realities).
2. For Later Generations (Biological Insight)
As microscopy and modern biology developed, scientists gradually discovered that the characteristic activities in these species are carried out by females. What had long been understood as standard linguistic usage also came to align remarkably well with biological reality.
This harmony is meaningful. God is the author of both the laws of nature and the laws of the Arabic language. By weaving them together, the verses accommodate the linguistic conventions of an ancient society while beautifully aligning with biological realities that would only be uncovered through scientific inquiry many centuries later.