Ants
Scott Roche sends in today’s picture of ants milking aphids on a pine tree. I am reminded of a highly refined bit of operatic culture from my childhood:
There’s a place in France
Where the nekkid ladies dance
Because their pants
Are fuuuuull of aaaaants!
In case you grew up culturally impoverished with regard to this particular bit of bardic lore, you might be wondering how nekkid ladies could be wearing pants. Well, they can’t, silly! They’re nekkid because they took them off. Because they were fuuuuull of aaaaants!
Every child who grew up on a farm knows how to deal with fire ants: stop, drop trou, and roll.
In a related childhood safety tip, this technique also works for liar, liars.
Slowly getting the site back onto an even keel. It's nice to get back into the old posting rhythm.
tceisele said,
March 11, 2008 @ 7:59 am
Hmm, a categorization question; is this a picture of ants that happen to be milking aphids, or a picture of aphids that are being tended by ants?
David Brady said,
March 11, 2008 @ 8:22 am
tceisele: Good point! Since I want the tags to make it easy to find things on InsectPOD, I’ve gone ahead and tagged this image as True Bugs, Aphids.
It may get a bit complicated (ants aren’t true bugs! aphids aren’t venomous!) but I’ll try to keep it straight. From now on I’ll try to categorize all bugs in a photo. I may skip categorizing prey species unless they’re obvious but I’ll try to do my best. A crab spider eating a bee would probably want to be categorized under bees as well, for instance, while a dragonfly swallowing the barely recognizable final remains of a gnat might not be worth categorizing under flies.
Great idea! Thank you!
Scott said,
March 11, 2008 @ 9:44 am
So THAT”S what they’re doing. Huh. Learn something new every day.
Arrkhal said,
March 15, 2008 @ 3:12 pm
Hm. When I was a kid, the song went “There’s a place in France / Where the naked ladies dance / And there’s a hole in the wall / So the kids can see it all.” But that’s in this area of the country.