Comments | hoorayiwake: nerds, nerds, ant nerds

hoorayiwake

nerds, nerds, ant nerds

Apr 02, 2009 15:35

Ok, so it's nerdy as all getout, but I love the story that NPR ran yesterday on E.O. Wilson's research of the scent that ants emit when they die. Maybe it's because of my fifth-grade science experiment, which involved trapping ants from our backyard in quart jars and applying various powders from my chemistry set to see which would kill them, and ( Read more... )

Comments 4

kencat742 April 3 2009, 15:42:26 UTC

lol...i heard that in my vanpool and was laughing at how he was describing the ant trying to clean itself off and re-enter the colony when another one would still smell it and then pick it off and carry it to the ant graveyard.

hoorayiwake April 4 2009, 05:43:48 UTC

I'm so glad you thought it was funny, too...

I can just imagine the exchange:

Ant 1: Wow, you smell dead... better cart you off to the Heap-O-Death!
Ant 2: No no no! I'm alive! Look, I'm kicking!
Ant 1: (no response. slings Ant 2 over shoulder and proceeds to heap-o-death.)
Ant 2: (keeps kicking, until dumped on top of the pile of other dead ants) ... ugh. Man, I smell horrible. But eh, what else to do? Back to work...

(30 seconds later: repeat scene with Ant 3)

(2 minutes later: repeat scene with Ant 4)

Etc.

I mean, it's morbid and all, but still... the idea is HILARIOUS.

freespirit82 April 4 2009, 19:41:27 UTC

hehe...I need to listen to that. E.O. Wilson is one of my new heroes. Have you read "The Creation" yet?
and...um...killing ants with random chemicals? This is a side of you I never saw! ;-)

hoorayiwake April 4 2009, 20:05:17 UTC

No, I've read shamefully little of his work, actually - just scattered essays here and there. I'll keep an eye out for that one.

Do you remember that huge red ant pile we had in our back yard when we were kids? The one we used to poke with sticks to watch the ants run around like Chicken Little thinking the sky was falling? Yeah, well... they were the little victims of my science experiment. I think only one jar of them died, in the end.... and a few escaped at school when I dropped one of the jars and it shattered on the basement floor.

I guess I didn't think of it as cruel... I was just curious to see what would happen!