Edible Giant Toasted Leafcutter Ants

Yummy!

A delicacy in many parts of Northern South America, these ants - the largest type of leafcutter ant in the world - are thought to be aphrodisiacs, and are therefore quite a common wedding gift.

They also make a nice snack, which is why ThinkGeek is selling Giant Toasted Leafcutter Ants.


(via The Presurfer)

Lord of the Ants

A fascinating man - Ed Wilson is the ant man.

Over six decades at Harvard University he has discovered more about ants than anyone else in history. He has thrown into relief for the general public just how important ants are—how they represent 25% or more of the insect biomass on the planet, how collectively they weigh more than all the humans in the world, how they assist humans by aerating the soil, suturing wounds, or, as in South Africa, harvesting the rooibos seeds for farm workers to collect. And how ancient they are: in 1966 Wilson and his colleagues identified an ant in a shard of amber that was 80m years old. Ants emerged along with flowering plants 130m years ago. By contrast, the genus Homo diverged 2m years ago, has existed as Homo sapiens for a fraction of that time, with a civilization of 20,000 years or so.

Read more: Ants and Us, Published on More Intelligent Life
or watch NOVA: Lord of the Ants on YouTube

Houston-area invaded by crazy rasberry ants

The crazy Rasberry ants are marching! Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of them are coming in a near-unstoppable zig-zagging insect army intent on making Houston homes, yards and lives a living hill.

First spotted in 2002 in Pasadena by Tom Rasberry, the exterminator for whom the rice-grain-sized insects are named, the ants now have spread through much of the greater Houston area. May through September is their peak period — a time when billions of the critters with a reluctance to sting and a habit of chewing up electrical wiring may infest a single acre. Homeowners daily sweep up dust bins of their dead and maimed.

While they are not prone to stinging humans, the ants do pose potentially serious problems. Ants indirectly can damage plants by establishing a symbiotic relationship with sap-sucking aphids. Ants feed on a sugary aphid excretion called honeydew and, therefore, protect the aphids from predators.

More significantly, crazy Rasberry ants have demonstrated a tendency to nest in and damage electric equipment.

Source: Houston Chronicle

Photo: Tom Rasberry, an exterminator, lets "crazy rasberry ants," named after him, crawl on his arm in Deer Park.
David J. Phillip: AP

Making sugar ants

Click the photo to see how the ants were made.

(via)

Why Ants Rule the World

Scientists estimate modern-day ants first evolved about 120 million years ago. But the fossil record suggests that ants at this time weren't the prevalent insect that they are today. Not until 60 million years later, when some ants adapted to the new world of flowering plants and diversified their diets, did the critters achieve ecological dominance.

Since then they've had a successful run of the planet.

Scientists estimate that about 20,000 ant species crawl the Earth. Taxonomists have classified more than 11,000 species, which account for at least one-third of all insect biomass. The combined heft of ants in the Brazilian Amazon is about four times greater than the combined mass of all of the mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, according to one survey.