Myremecology-Man; science of Ant-Man

Probably not the story of blog post you'd expect to see from my blog, given how outdoorsy it normally is, but there you go. Yesterday I went to see Ant-Man in the cinema, and was actually quite impressed, not only with the plot, but with the accuracy of the ants. Yes, if you go see a film called Ant-Man, there are going to be ants.

A few mild spoilers to follow here and there, but mostly to do with ant behaviour.

A cleverly disguised spoiler bar

So, as Hank Pym (officially one of my most disliked characters*) states, there are 4 different ant species used in the film. Let's get our lineup...

1. Fire ants, the builders.
2. Bullet ants, Paraponera clavata, the ones with the nasty sting.
3. Crazy ants -the boyfriend laughed and didn't believe they were a thing until I started correcting the science to him afterwards- the electric ones.
4. Carpenter ants, the flying ones.

Quite a nice mixture, and certainly all familiar to an American audience; less so to a British one, but bullet and fire ants aren't unrecognizable. There was actually quite a lot of ant action to be had throughout the film, which was a nice surprise. I thought there would be a lot more general superhero action, rather than actual cool ant stuff.

*So much so I almost didn't go and see it, but was convinced by the trailers that he wouldn't have much part in it. I was wrong. Why couldn't there be Janet in there instead?

I'm going to break this one down into two parts; fire ants and bullet ants today, and then crazy ants and carpenter ants another day. Probably I'll do a further post on other miscellaneous stuff I want to mention too, like pheromones, after that, but who knows.

Fire ants

These guys were described as being great at building. The fact that they, like bullet ants, have a killer bite wasn't recognized,  but I think they were trying to simplify for those who didn't know ants (ie, the rest of the cinema) to one major fact per species.

They put the fire ants' building ability to good use though- the one I appreciated most was when they built a raft to float down a water tunnel on. This is one of the coolest protective abilities of fire ants; in nature, they have been recorded making giant rafts out of their own bodies when nests are flooded, allowing the colony to float away with the queen in the middle, and survive extreme flood events. They are able to build bridges as well, so that was cool to see, although it was quite a sooped-up, extra fast build and reform they did in the film.

Get me out of here! I'm standing on a pile of ants!

They were nice and small in comparison to the other species shown, which was happily right! Their colouring came up nicely as well, so they were easily recognizable against the more often seen carpenter ants.

Their nests aren't exactly like the ones in the picture above; they're much more triangular in shape. Because fire ants are a bit of a pest in the States, they're freely exterminated. Some people like to make art out of their nests though, which really shows off the architecture they create underground...

Not the nicest way to go

Bullet ants

Paraponera clavata, the name mangled all of too many times for my ears to cope. It probably was only about twice though, so perhaps I should give credit for trying... and the film writers actually including a latin name for one of the species. These guys were rightly labelled as the 'really painful' ones.

Oh man, and these guys bite. On the Schmidt Insect Pain Index they sit happily at the very top end. The Schmidt Index runs from 0-4, 0 being something unable to feel, to 4, which is agony. Lovely. Unfortunately Marvel got a bit confused here and labelled bullet ants as 1, but never mind.

Otherwise known as, the bad insect pets scale

These guys really can cause as much pain as was shown in the film, and Scott was pretty wise to really want to step on any of them. Really not a good species to annoy. Not only is their sting absolute agony, the pain lasts for up to 24 hours, so you are really feeling it long-term if you get on the bad side of one of these beasties. Luckily, they're pretty huge, some workers getting up to 1.2 inches long, so you're not likely to miss one if it's running around. 

They can get literally this big

In one tribe in the Amazon, the initiation to become an adult is to stick your hand in a glove full of bullet ants. No thanks. 

That's all for now, although I will eventually get down to writing a part two. For now, go watch the film so I can reference more stuff in the future!

A small update...

Work has been such a crazy ride over the past few months, I've had absolutely no time at all to write a blog post since March, apparently. But now it's starting to come to a bit of a quieter period, what with the summer starting for schools, so I actually have some time to do things like this! Commence incoming backlog of posts, probably in a bit of a weird order as I try and cram four months of posts into probably four weeks.

A selection of pictures of work... honestly!

I've been living on the Dorset coast again since February, working as a field studies tutor- which means I'm outdoors all the time (bliss!) There's loads of wildlife around and really awesome geography, so there'll be a bit of a mixture of blog posts coming up eventually. I shan't spoil it though, mostly because I am not sure what order I'm going to write them in...