If ants were able to determine that you and your efforts were causing pollution, and could understand that it was you doing it, then organize in mass to attack you to stop it, and when their efforts weren't effective evolve new forms of themselves solely to stop you, I certainly think I would give pause when seeing them in my kitchen, wouldn't you?
There is no indication in factorio this is what's happening. Maybe they just instinctively attack pollution because it smells bad to then without knowing higher level implications of it.
They aren't actual animals that we have to approach scientifically; it's better to look at them through a literary lense.
I personally assumed they were intelligent. I thought the game was making an attempt to draw parallels to the way real life colonialists dehumanazed the native people.
You could definitely read them as being more inspired by scifi aliens like the zerg, though. It is a very common trope for zerg/flood/bugger style aliens to be initially percieved as lacking higher intelligence, but twist they're actually as smart or smarter than humans. But that's not necessarily the case in factorio (afaik, I never got to the endgame). If they aren't intelligent, how does that cast the player's actions? I guess it puts you more in the role of being harassed by wolves?
shrug Sure I guess one can take any interpretation. My point was more that I think it doesn't make any sense to do so. I've played hundreds of games over the years where you kill, murder and maim humans (and animals, and alien life forms). I just don't think there's any interesting philosophical consquence to it, nor any interesting parallels to real life behaviour.
Iirc correctly there is a factorio blig post somewhere about this exact topic, with the original author basically saying 'meh it's just a game mechanic'.
Then again, there's the stardew valley author removing pig butchering from the game for sort of similar concerns, so what do I know.
