Caution: Ants at Work

March 18, 2012 11:09 AM

Amazing macro photos of ants "at work" and "at play." There are many, many more photos here. My favorite is the weightlifting ant. Ants are incredibly strong for their size, as this amazing picture of an ant holding a snail shows.
posted by desjardins (30 comments total)

I love ants! Unless they try to hijack my house. I. Find beauty in their form and the way they work together. You can use cinnamon as an ant repellent. I keep both cinnamon oil on hand to keep ants out of my home. It does not kill them but they hat the smell.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 11:15 AM on March 18, 2012

Freakin' amazing pictures. I just wish, as I do with almost every goddamn great photo that I see on the Internet, that they came in a resolution suitable for desktop backgrounds. Surely a 1900x1280 version wouldn't ruin the photographer's livelihood, would it?

So frustrating, because these pictures are awesome and I want to decorate my life with them! Ants are seriously incredible organisms.
posted by Scientist at 11:18 AM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Prophet Mohamed once really chewed out a man who burned an an-hill. He said to the man, 'You have destroyed a community which glorifies God!' he had tremendous respect for ants and bees.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 11:21 AM on March 18, 2012 [6 favorites]

Yeah, when I was a child I knew kids who gleefully stomped on them, and that always struck me as slightly sociopathic.
posted by desjardins at 11:23 AM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

So I'm not totally clear on this: these are living ants, right? Because, if so, that's way cool.
posted by byanyothername at 11:27 AM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yes, they're alive - check out this photo of ants crawling on his camera.
posted by desjardins at 11:31 AM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

The guy has some other amazing photos - here's a porcupine, (somewhat disturbing) closeup of a grasshopper, and a totally unreal scene of penguins on an iceberg.
posted by desjardins at 11:36 AM on March 18, 2012 [5 favorites]

That's a hedgehog.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 11:39 AM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

That is way cool.
posted by byanyothername at 11:39 AM on March 18, 2012

here's a porcupine

That's a hedgehog.

Yeah, this. Porcupines are porcupinier.
posted by Sys Rq at 11:43 AM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

That's a hedgehog Mrs Tiggy-Winkle.
posted by Forktine at 11:45 AM on March 18, 2012 [9 favorites]

Good god, this man must have the patience of a medieval copyist monk to fiddle with the ants until they stay anywhere close to where he needs them to be.
posted by Iosephus at 11:46 AM on March 18, 2012 [3 favorites]

You can use cinnamon as an ant repellent. I keep both cinnamon oil on hand to keep ants out of my home.

Monsanto called confused. They want to know what the other thing is you keep on hand.
posted by hal9k at 11:46 AM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm not entirely sure they're alive. Ants don't just pick up logs and raise them to the sky like that. And if they did, it would be with their jaws, which they use to grip items, and not their "hands."
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 11:49 AM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

FUN ANT FACT: the total biomass of the worlds ants outweighs all the other insects and animals put together!
posted by sexyrobot at 12:06 PM on March 18, 2012

sexyrobot: "FUN ANT FACT: the total biomass of the worlds ants outweighs all the other insects and animals put together!"

Are you calling us fat?
posted by workerant at 12:24 PM on March 18, 2012 [13 favorites]

... if they did, it would be with their jaws, which they use to grip items, and not their "hands."
posted by BlackLeotardFront

Are you say that the Ants Playing Poker shot is faked?
posted by StickyCarpet at 12:45 PM on March 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

"insects and animals" is kind of like "grass and plants". Most animals are insects.
posted by idiopath at 12:56 PM on March 18, 2012

workerant: "sexyrobot: "FUN ANT FACT: the total biomass of the worlds ants outweighs all the other insects and animals put together!"

Are you calling us fat?"

No, just big-exoskeletoned.
posted by Splunge at 1:02 PM on March 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

FUN ANT FACT: the total biomass of the worlds ants outweighs all the other insects and animals put together!

I... don't believe this is true. I do know that total ant biomass is greater than total human biomass, but I'd be pretty surprised if ants still come out on top once you add in all ocean life, for example.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:07 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love ants. And enjoy stomping on them. Next time I'll give one of them the option to impress me before my foot smothers him.
posted by Sweetmag at 1:31 PM on March 18, 2012

I can't imagine ever looking at pictures of ants and saying "awwww they're so cute - look at that one trying to row a boat!" but here I am.
posted by subject_verb_remainder at 2:00 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I made the mistake of putting one of those glowing gel ant farms on my desk at work. I was too busy being inspired by their work ethic-- to actually work. Plus, the "guy in a cage watching ants in a cage" connection wasn't lost on me-- and existential concerns never increase productivity.
posted by womprat78 at 2:13 PM on March 18, 2012 [10 favorites]

... if they did, it would be with their jaws, which they use to grip items, and not their "hands."

I think that the little scene that lots of these were shot on were not necessarily originally oriented as they're presented here. That probably means some compositing, I guess? I don't care a whole lot how these were made... they're awesome.

Plus, how would you pose dead ants so well? Or at all? Or make such perfect little ant maquettes?
posted by cmoj at 2:59 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I spent hours last night with a calk gun and vacuum repelling the 4th Pavement Ant Infantry Division from a bedroom closet, and now you're trying to make me think these little buggers are cute again? It's actually kind of working. Dammit.
posted by Blue Meanie at 3:22 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have heard that Jains aren't allowed to walk on rugs because there might be ants trapped underneath. I already knew they swept the path in front of them.
posted by desjardins at 3:45 PM on March 18, 2012

You can use cinnamon as an ant repellent. I keep both cinnamon oil on hand to keep ants out of my home.

Monsanto called confused. They want to know what the other thing is you keep on hand.
posted by hal9k at 11:46 AM on March


Oooopa! Typie finger all fat!

I keep a good grade of powdered cinnamon on hand as well.

Oh tell Monsanto I said 'póg mo thoínn!'
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 5:12 PM on March 18, 2012

Yes, they're alive - check out this photo of ants crawling on his camera.

Aye, and gullible is no in the dictionary anymore.

Of course they're dead.
posted by the cuban at 9:52 PM on March 18, 2012

Then I'd be very interested in the answers to my questions about how he'd do this with dead ants.

It seems like it'd be a lot easier to take a bunch of pictures and use the ones that turned out well (as the vast majority of photographers do anyway) and then, I bet, composite some of them.
posted by cmoj at 10:05 PM on March 18, 2012

I thought ants' apparent super strength had more to do with the sheering forces needed to lift something. An ant lifting a snail isn't the same as a human lifting an elephant, even though it looks similar relatively, because the absolute force required to lift an elephant would break a human's body. In the same vein, a flea can jump many times its own height without shattering its legs. This is why we don't see animals much bigger than an elephant on earth, and the big ones don't do much heavy lifting or long-distance jumping.
posted by deathpanels at 10:27 PM on March 18, 2012 [1 favorite]