Friday, June 19th, 2009
The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has mounted a small new exhibit, Farmers, Warriors, Builders: The Hidden Life of Ants. Michele and her daughter and I took the morning off from Artomatic and checked out it yesterday.
Ants dominate the small-scale world. We may seldom notice them, but ...
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Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008
To perpetuate its life cycle, a newly identified parasite morphs its ant victims to such a degree that the infected ants resemble red, ripe juicy berries that birds are more inclined to pick, according to the University of California at Berkeley.
Eggs from the parasite then pass through the unwitting birds ...
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Saturday, November 24th, 2007
Thousands of people in northeastern China have protested on the streets and surrounded government offices demanding help recovering money from a get-rich-quick scheme to raise ants to make an aphrodisiac tonic.
Hundreds of anti-riot troops and police in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, were deployed to stop protesters reaching the provincial ...
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Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
This week on Nova: Master of the Killer Ants.
Although known for their ruthless aggression, driver ants also have a beneficial side. This is traditionally exploited by the Mofu people of northern Cameroon, who call the local species of red driver ants jaglavak.
...
"Master of the Killer Ants" tells the story ...
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Wednesday, November 14th, 2007
Yesterday's New York Times Science section has a lengthy article that looks at some of the recent work by mathematical biologists Daniel Grunbaum and Iain Couzin on the instinct to swarm.
If you have ever observed [tag]ants[/tag] marching in and out of a nest, you might have been reminded of ...
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Friday, October 12th, 2007
Myrmecos.net brings us this awesome action photo of army ants preying on a queen they've dragged out of a colony they're raiding.
[link via Matt Dowling's Blog, Ontogeny]
Posted in ants, entomology | No Comments »
Monday, October 8th, 2007
The Washington Post ran a special "Museums" section on October 7th, and in the featured article, "Curators' Favorites: No Cookie-Cutter Ideas Here" they asked local curators what some of their favorite objects are. This article met the definition of being phoned-in in every sense of the phrase. All ...
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Saturday, September 1st, 2007
The Audobon Naturalist Society has an upcoming program about ants:
Antomology: An Introduction to the Natural History of Backyard Ants
Thursday, September 13 (7:30 - 10 pm)
Leader: Jill Swearingen
Explore the underground world of one of our most important, ubiquitous, and overlooked families of insects. We will focus on ants found in the ...
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Sunday, July 8th, 2007
I've got the camera standing by. Any day now one of our favorite annual rituals should occur. I'm feeling lazy, so here's a repost of a July 6, 2003 post on the subject:
ant day
Filed under: wild kingdom — rebecca @ 1:26 pm
Every year on a certain day, small winged ants ...
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Tuesday, May 8th, 2007
I was reading a news item about Texas A and M University's Imported [tag]Fire Ant Research and Management Project[/tag] in and optimistically titled piece in the Mississippi Picayune Item: "Red fire ants, long a worry to farmers and ranchers, may have met their match."
It's an interesting piece about the possibility ...
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