The Daily Ant
Myrmecology Dies in Darkness
Category: Art & Media
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If you have never heard of the “Look Around You” British science TV show, you have something else to be thankful for this holiday season:
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If you are a Camponotus floridanus carpenter ant, you certainly would – at least, according to a recent study published in July of this year in Current Biology. Many thanks to Correspondant Mike Schellman for bringing to our attention this one-minute video that concisely breaks down the results of this surprising study: Incidentally, this is…
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That’s right – this very day, February 21st, 2023, is the publication date of Ants: A Visual Guide! If you order today at Princeton University Press, you can even get 30% with the discount “PUP30” (the code works for both the hardcover and ebook version). If that doesn’t sound like a steal, then check out…
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Myrmecophile. That’s a word. It’s a big word, too. It’s a word that means “ant lover”, so it is also a word that could apply to you, dear reader. Usually, “myrmecophile” describes any of an impressively large number of species that have close-knit relationships with ants. We have myrmecophiles on the mind today, because we…
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When we decided to reemerge this week after two long, silent years, it turns out that we chose an especially auspicious season. Evidence of our fortune first presented itself via this tweet from the most influential cinematic account on Twitter: Is it a coincidence that this tweet was tweeted on Monday, the very day we…
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There is a moment in the life of every media outlet dedicated to providing premier ant content for general consumption when it becomes inescapably clear that silence is no longer an option. Formicid friends, readers, and inquilines, we at The Daily Ant have arrived at such a moment. We have been silent for two full…
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Earlier this year, BBC Earth put together a 20-minute video titled “Best of Ants”, a collection of their “Top 5 Ant Moments”. Enjoy!
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On Sunday, our editor-in-chief was interviewed by a new ant-keeper podcast with the delightful name “FormiCast“! Although the focus of the podcast is generally ant-keeping, the interview focused more on various ant facts, including a question and antswer period. The interview begins at about minute 6:00 in the video embedded below. Enjoy! [UPDATE: It turns…
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Ants are so beautiful that even the true bugs wanna be them. Check out this ant mimic larvae in the order Hemiptera (the “true bugs”), shared on Twitter by PhD student Naoto Idogawa (井戸川直人) of Kyoto University. Remember, though it may be hard to believe, this is *not* an ant! One of the clearest signs…
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Fans of K-Pop will recognize this group of young men as the world-famous South Korean band “BTS”: Fans of ants will wonder what BTS has to do with ants. It turns out that the boy band’s music label is Big Hit Entertainment, which is going public in a much-anticipated IPO next month. As explained in…
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We really shouldn’t be surprised. Is it even possible that a company with a vertebrate mascot – namely, a gecko – could resist eventually succumbing to myrmecophobia? After all, some geckos eat ants! Whether or not we could have avoided such a fate, witness (if you can stomach it) this Geico advertisement, released early last…
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Marvel at the iridescent coloration of this ant, Rhytidoponera aspersa:
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