No ants in Antartica..

Does anyone else find it slightly bemusing that Antarctica is one of the few places in the world that doesn’t have ants?

Despite the ants lack of complete global domination, they are not doing too badly in other areas and they are fascinating enough for people to want to keep them in little ‘farms’ and give them to children…   Really people?  farming ants now?  you obviously don’t live in my backyard where I do everything I can to keep them out of the house.. still it was a thoughtfully scientific gift Aunt Eloise.

But I digress… even given my lack of compassion to allow ants to share my nest, I am still engaged by their social structure and sheer engineering magnificence. They are from the family Formicidae – which sounds acidic, and just over half of the estimated 22000 species have been classified – you still got some work ahead of you science. Australia has 985 different species of which this photographer has managed to capture two..

Ants are also cool in that they can lift a gazillion* times their body weight (*actual figures vary) like this…

ok, that’s just a cornflake, but that’s pretty cool for a creature with no hands.

That type of ant is not too bad, they are fairly harmless as an individual.. but then, when was the last time you saw just one ant?

Ok there was this one time I saw just one ant, but it didn’t look like it needed much help at all. When I put the camera close to it it hissed at me…  yes I actually heard it hiss… I, for one, welcome out new ant overlords…

ready for the close up?