They are also a speciies capable of Teamwork , Farming , engineering , Forming governing system , Building sky scrapers . No other animals come close to that.
What if they would be considered as Non Human Intelligence?
Certainly they are. So when Karl Nell says "a higher form of Non Human Intelligence" is interacting with humanity, I doubt he means ants.
When Tim Gallaudet says "advanced non human intelligence" are interacting with our assets in the oceans - I doubt he means dolphins.
Tho both are undoubtedly NHI.
The actual "tech civilizational level" NHI are often described as insectoid. Interesting to consider that a collectively intelligent ant species could proceed through evolution into a multiplanet technologically super-advanced one.
So you can think of it as a single organism that has a "distributed" body.
From that perspective, the individual ants correspond to cells or organs, and it becomes both less and more fantastic :)