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Wednesday, January 15. 2020

Ant Army


Gerard Vanderleun has a post up about ants. Of course, they are fascinating bugs capable of vast, complex works with microscopically-sized brains.


He happened to link the famous short story, Leiningen Versus the Ants. 


It's a heck of a tale. Somewhere around the first third of it it dawned on me that I had read it long ago, but that didn't matter because I had forgotten the ending. 

Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 17:10 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Leiningen and the Ants--Recycled in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG7T1HZ5YbQ
#1 Jim on 2020-01-15 19:06 (Reply)
There is also TH White's Once and Future King with a fascinating take on ants
#2 Assistant Village Idiot on 2020-01-15 21:30 (Reply)
Ants (and other social insects) should not be thought of as the animal. The colony is the real animal... Just as cells are components of other creatures
#3 Jay on 2020-01-16 08:40 (Reply)
The Naked Jungle (1954) starring Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker was based on Leiningen Versus the Ants.
#4 SB on 2020-01-16 13:00 (Reply)
The Fire Ant - Wikipedia

A number of alkaloids are identified from insects, among which the fire ant venom alkaloids known as solenopsins have received greater attention from researchers. These insect alkaloids can be efficiently extracted by solvent immersion of live fire ants or by centrifugation of live ants followed by silica-gel chromatography purification. Tracking and dosing the extracted solenopsin ant alkaloids has been described as possible based on their absorbance peak around nanometers.
Fire ant venom leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

In addition to its toxicity, solenopsis has a number of other biological activities. It inhibits angiogenesis in vitro via the phosphoinositide 3-kinase signaling pathway, inhibits neuronal nitric oxide synthase in a manner that appears to be non-competitive with L-arginine and inhibits quorum-sensing signaling in some bacteria.The biological activities of solenopsins have led researchers to propose a number of biotechnological and biomedical applications for these compounds. For instance, mentioned anti-bacterial and interference in quorum-sensing signalling apparently provide solenopsins with considerable anti-biofilm activity, which suggests the potential of analogs as new disinfectants and surface-conditioning agents.

Translation: Fire ant venom is an extremely powerful anti-biotic; and it will also kill tumors. Also, if you eat a little, it will ruin your sense of taste for the rest of the day, so you won't want to eat anything.
#5 Ron Liebermann on 2020-01-16 17:35 (Reply)
I also remember that story from many years ago, probably 60.
#6 Michael T Kennedy (Link) on 2020-01-18 20:31 (Reply)

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