Uncle Milton Passes Away but not Before the Ant-Farm goes into Space

"That's something I'd never do. I'd never step on an ant. Put three of my kids through college."

That quote from Milton Levine, co-creator with his brother-in-law, of the class ant-farm, was taken from an interview with NPR radio. Milton died last week, at the age of 97, in California.

Milton came up with the idea for the ant-farm after watching some pavement ants one day. he brought the classic ant-farm to the market in 1956 and, over the years, has sold over 20 million.

You can still buy the classic Uncle Milton Ant-Farm, as shown above, at a number of on-line retailers. In recent years, however, another design has become more popular. These are an illuminated farm in which the soil/sand has been replaced with a florescent gel. The gel apparently, isn't just a digging medium, but contains some food and water for the ants. I'll have to buy one and try it out.

An ant-farm has even gone into space. A project designed by high school students from Syracuse, New York, sent 17 harvester ants into space on the shuttle Columbia in 2003. The purpose was to study how they tunnel in a micro-gravity environment. While their data was downloaded each day during the project, the ants would never return alive. They were lost when the Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on Feb 1, 2003.

I've always wondered why the choice of ants for these farms was almost always harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.). Apparently their large size reduced the number of escapees, a characteristic some parents probably valued greatly. The problem with this species, however, is their painful sting. It is much worse than the southern fire ant (Solenopsis invicta).

Last night, I happened to catch the replay of an interview on CBC Radio from 1997, with the Canadian distributor for Uncle Milton ant-farms. He didn't seem as particular about the ant species and was offering 0.5 - 0.75 cents per ant to prospective ant-ranglers (I think his ad for ant-ranglers prompted the interview). Seems when people buy these farms they like them to come with ants. I don't know if the job still stands but it could be a fairly lucrative way to spend the summer.

Photo Credit: NPR Radio

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/26/133249612/Uncle-Milton-Ant-Farm-Co-Inventor-Dies-At-97

Croatian Basketball Ants...Oh...and Brad Pitt

Today I received a very interesting ticket to a basketball game held recently in Zagreb, Croatia. It came from a good friend of mine, Glen Chilton (now living in Townsville, Australia), with whom I chased termites in New Orleans a few years back. Glen was in Croatia to chase a particular and peculiar small freshwater fish known as a Dace, previously described as extinct. The purpose of the chase was for a book he is working on. The basketball game was another matter entirely, and Glen thought that it mattered in a particular way to me.

At first glance, as Glen noticed in his letter, the team mascot looks like a bee. Yes, but look at what it is standing upon. In fact, it isn't a bee, but rather an ant. Why would a basketball team choose ants as their team mascot?

I'm thinking they know Greek mythology.

According to Ovid's Metamorphosis, the Island of Aegina was devastated by a plague (caused by Zeus's wife Hera in some accounts) that resulted in the death of all but the family of King Aeacus. The King pleaded to Zeus to help his kingdom. Zeus, in fickle Greek god fashion, answers the call by transforming the ants nesting in an oak tree, just outside the palace window, into an army of young soldiers. We don't learn where the women of the island might have come from but apparently whoever first created this story was unaware that the ants in question would have almost certainly all have been female. In any event, these became know as the Myrmidons, a self-sacrificing, aggressive and ruthless army that would come to be led by Achilles of Illiad fame.

And who played Achilles in the 2004 movie Troy? Brad Pitt! Brad was the leader of the ant army, and descendant of the ants himself.

So why would a basketball team have ants as their mascot? Well, who wouldn`t want to associate a team with the most competitive, aggressive team players on the planet, ants! It was common in England in the 1800s to call gangs of thugs Myrmidons, so it is nice to see ants rehabilitated into a more normative team activity.

Photo credits:

Scanned copy of ticket-Me

Movie Poster from Wikipedia (Troy (film))