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Ant Fact No. 7: While humans have only one stomach, the ant has TWO stomachs. One stomach holds the ant's personal food supply and the second stomach holds food to be shared with other ants.
Ants certainly stomach a lot!
As the extended summer holiday season begins, pair-ants will no doubt be on the look-out for something to keep their pupa(e) entertained. For the worker ant classes, here's a holiday activity for which no passport is required:
10 year old Lucas is the new kid on the block and the local bullies make sure he knows it. Tired of being a punching bag, Lucas takes out his frustration on the ants living in his lawn. But when the ants strike back, shrinking Lucas down to their size with a magic potion and forcing him to live like an ant with the colony, an astonishing new world opens up to him. Lucas learns first hand the value of friendship and teamwork, ultimately leading the ants in an effort to save their colony from annihilation and in the process, obtains the things he wants the most: friends, companionship, acceptance and the courage to stand up for himself.
"Everything in the colony is a team effort!"
8 comments:
I'm worried about all this ant phenomena that's creeping into my life lately. Last weekend, I found out for the first time in my life that ants bite. I never knew this, I thought ants were totally harmless. Today, again for the very first time in my life, I got bitten by an ant. I'm not being ironic, I've just led a life free of ant bites (unless I have been bitten by an ant before but didn't realise because I believed ants didn't bite). Mowing my lawn this afternoon I came across at least four ants nests. Now you're talking about an ant uprising. And your name is Ant.
I need to lie down.
PS I was bitten by a spider once, so I'm not totally ignorant of insect issues.
PPS - Have you ever seen the film 'Empire of the Ants'? If not, then you must. The special effects are stunning. I am sure this film cannot be half so good.
On ant films,
Try Antz and A Bug's Life, two more modern ants films.
Oh, and for an ant fact, there are 11,880 different species of ants across the world.
And The Antagonists
Jetstar28
Empire of the Ants
Jetstar28
Ha ha - 3.1 out of 10 for Empire of the Ants - confirmation of a true classic!
Blimey, that's an even lower score than The Swarm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078350/
I'm impressed
Kier: Spiders are arachnids. ;)
Jetstar boss: I've seen Antz, I thought it was rather good. I'll add A Bug's Life to the list.
stef: If I'm ever looking for a bad film to while away a couple of hours, I know who to ask. Although I did manage to find Netforce entirely unaided. Oh, and you might like this which is lacking a little of the info contained in this, this and this.
Kier: Spiders are arachnids. ;)
My god. I stand corrected again. I think I will go out and buy some orthapaedic shoes and save you the job next time.
I should have expected that an Ant would be able to demonstrate my patent ignorance of insect issues which I was trying to bluff - I would have got away with it too, if it hadn't been for...ah never mind. There are things that 'Ants' can teach everybody, clearly.
Anyway, the spider bite wasn't even the most impressive thing that happened to me...I got bitten by a snake, too, in my own back garden when I was crouched on the grass having a smoke. Now you know why I gave up.
And yes, I know a snake isn't an insect either. But I know that they bite because I've still got the fang marks.
And I know that slugs bite, because I've seen Slugs. And I also know that a slug isn't an insect. It's some name beginning with 'G'. Or it might be 'A', I can't remember. But it ends in 'pod'. See - I knew that!
Thanks for the tip, we'll look out for Ant Bully.
In the same spirit, as alternative holiday reading to Harry Potter and Alex Rider can I suggest books by Alan Gibbons? I've enjoyed "Caught in the crossfire" (about Muslims and the far right in a northern English town) and "Defender" (about Northern Ireland).
Kier: if you go to the New Forest museum you can see an exhibition about Brusher Mills who was a snake catcher about 100 years ago. Unfortunately such useful individuals are no longer valued by our rulers. Instead, not only are the snakes protected, they are actively breeding them and then releasing them into the wild to increase their numbers.
Another great development this year is that at some popular locations in the Forest every piece of dog dirt is being painted fluorescent blue or pink.
So our rulers can devote resources to breeding poisonous reptiles and inflicting them on us, and resources to paint hundreds of pieces of dog dirt pretty colours, but not to a proper inquiry into the events of July 7th 2005.
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