killer ants

went to the library the other week. We were looking for books on three specific topics: Golf, the German language, and KILLER ANTS.

a few weeks ago while staying up late rocking the baby I watched two excellent shows on the Discovery Channel – the Future is Wild, and KILLER ANTS. Being heavily into futurism, I appreciated the Future is Wild. But KILLER ANTS struck a chord with me. First of all, this show is called KILLER ANTS for Pete’s sake. How can you not like a show called KILLER ANTS. Second of all this show featured incredible footage of amazing ant swarms.

I suppose what I find amazing about ants is their ability to act as an aggregate organism. A single ant is of no real consequence, but an ant swarm is a multitude of tiny insects working together to do great and terrible things. During the rainy season, Siafu, the true stars of the show KILLER ANTS, use smell to coordinate a rampage across Tanzania. Here’s a direct quote from the link featured above (www.bbc.co.uk):

“The swarm approaches like a monstrous black tide, around 15 metres wide and containing about 100,000 sterile sisters, working mutually as a single hunting unit. A big scorpion scuttles out from beneath a log with an ant, several thousand times smaller, clamped voraciously onto a leg. It frantically tries to dislodge the passenger with well-coordinated stinger strikes, but the ant hangs on. The ant grapples at the floor with hooked feet hampering the scorpion’s escape, and, undetectable to my human senses, releases a recruitment chemical from a pair of special glands. Within seconds, hundreds respond to the call, and the scorpion vanishes below a seething throng. All around us, other creatures are meeting with a similar fate.”

if you get a chance to see this show, I highly recommend it.

otherwise, things are going great. Tomorrow (June 10th) is Callum’s two month birthday. It is amazing how quickly he is growing. Also, I’ve been doing some more writing. I am currently trying to find a way to incorporate ant swarms into my latest story. I think that it will be that much the better for it. How could it not?