Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Video of Fungus-Infected Ant


On YouTube is a short video from the BBC series Life in the Undergrowth which shows time lapse video of fungus growing from the head of an ant. Very cool. The lovely David Attenborough narrates. Other insects, too. The ant in the video is the infamous Paraponera clavata, a.k.a. the Bullet Ant, a.k.a. Hormiga Bala, a.k.a. the 24-hour ant, a.k.a. the giant scary tropical ant whose sting is so terrible it feels like you've been shot and are in agony for a day and you might even die from it. I sat down once not far from one of their nests. They all came out from the base of a tree stump towards me and I have never back-pedaled so fast in my life. Click here for some more info on P. clavata.

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