Friday, February 20, 2009

Killer Ants

Recently I started over thinking a statement made on a documentary about ants. I believe it was called Killer Ants and it was about a camera crew traveling the world to find an ant that could kill someone. I think it's unclear if they actually found it in the sense they're looking for. With the aid of their Ant Cam they safely film a variety of dangerous ants. They showed Jack Jumpers, Myrmecia species, that have a painful sting, but if you have an allergic reaction it can kill you. They also showed Driver ants, Dorylus, which would kill someone through suffocation. Their colonies reach 20 Million ants which is impressive for a single queen to maintain. This rivals many supercolonies maintained by hundreds of queens.

So here's the thing that gets me though. The're doing the Driver Ant thing and the narrator says something like. "These are Driver Ants. The locals believe they're the reason why Madagascar doesn't have any Elephants, and recently they've been blamed for the disapearance of a toruest."

Really one tourest? I don't know the story here but how does just one tourest mysteriously dissapear in a foreign country?

So they go on to show a farmer sleeping and suddenly the ants come and bite his feet and he casually gets up and walks away. His chickens were killed though because they couldn't run away. They show office workers Glad, and Overjoyed that the murderous ants have come to clear out their office of all the scorpions and roaches.

How could anyone blame these ants for the death of a tourest when you can simple get up and walk away from them?