Myrmecology Dies in Darkness
Well hello there! We’ve been on a bit of a hiatus, haven’t we? We do apologize for any pain our absence may have caused to our most dedicated readers, and are happy to report that premier ant content once again flows from the pages of The Daily Ant.
Here at The Daily Ant, we’ve consistently found that the brilliant Samantha Bee lives up to her namesake. Bee’s wit frequently skewers the worst of the vertebrate right. Thus, we were truly shocked when Fraternal Correspondant Joshua Blanchard shared with us a tragic comment Bee made in a recent show, laying bare that even Bee is anti-ant:
The Daily Ant maintains “Formicid Form”, a Sunday ant poetry series. When possible, our Verse Correspondant, Natalia Piland, provides a short commentary at the end of each poem. This week’s poem was sent to us by philosopher Larisa Svirsky. Enjoy!
It was when or because she became two kinds
of mad, both a feral nail biting into a plank
and a deranged screw cranking into a wood beam,
the aunt—I shouldn’t say her name,
After an unjustifiably long hiatus (5 weeks!), The Daily Ant is back. And time is on our mind. Ant wrinkles in time.
As consumers of mammalian media surely know already, Ant Wrinkle in Time hit theaters yesterday. Based on the Madeleine L’Engle novel of the same name, Ant Wrinkle in Time tells the story of an ant that sets out to travel through interstellar space on a string.
There once was a T.V. show called Friends. On this show, as documented by Tube Correspondant Katerina Theodossiou, there once was coverage of ants. Enjoy!
The Daily Ant maintains “Formicid Form”, a Sunday ant poetry series. When possible, our Verse Correspondant, Natalia Piland, provides a short commentary at the end of each poem. Enjoy!
The Ants
By John Clare
What wonder strikes the curious, while he views
The black ant’s city, by a rotten tree,
Or woodland bank! In ignorance we muse:
Pausing, annoyed, –we know not what we see,
Such government and thought there seem to be;
Some looking on, and urging some to toil,
Dragging their loads of bent-stalks slavishly:
And what’s more wonderful, when big loads foil
One ant or two to carry, quickly then
A swarm flock round to help their fellow-men*.
Surely they speak a language whisperingly,
Too fine for us to hear; and sure their ways
Prove they have kings and laws, and that they be
Deformed remnants of the Fairy-days.
Dedicated readers of The Daily Ant may remember that earlier this year, we featured myrmecologist Dr. Adrian Smith and his work on ant babies. Such readers may also remember our coverage of the Field Museum AntLab’s Dr. Shauna Price in a Theatre Thursdays installment. Well, recently, the same Dr. Price shared with us a marvelous BBC feature on ant babies from last spring. Although we do not endorse some of the vertebrate framing (“No one would call a baby ant cute.” Srsly?), we definitely recommend that everyone read the article and come to appreciate just how cool ant babies really are!
It’s hard to believe it, but it’s true. What started out one year ago from yesterday as a podunk formicid-friendly online media project with an inaugural post on loving your house ants has grown into a podunk formicid-friendly online media project with 196 published articles. Whether you’re joining us now for the first time, or have traversed the long foraging trail of myrmecological justice since the very beginning, it’s time to consider what we’ve accomplished together.
Continue reading “The Daily Ant One-Year Antiversary: In Review”
