Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions

Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions

by Mark W. Moffett
Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions

Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions

by Mark W. Moffett

Paperback(First Edition)

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Overview

Intrepid international explorer, biologist, and photographer Mark W. Moffett, “the Indiana Jones of entomology,” takes us around the globe on a strange and colorful journey in search of the hidden world of ants. In tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological exploits and provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, yet at a different scale and a faster tempo. Moffett’s spectacular close-up photographs shrink us down to size, so that we can observe ants in familiar roles; warriors, builders, big-game hunters, and slave owners. We find them creating marketplaces and assembly lines and dealing with issues we think of as uniquely human—including hygiene, recycling, and warfare. Adventures among Ants introduces some of the world’s most awe-inspiring species and offers a startling new perspective on the limits of our own perception.

• Ants are world-class road builders, handling traffic problems on thoroughfares that dwarf our highway systems in their complexity

• Ants with the largest societies often deploy complicated military tactics

• Some ants have evolved from hunter-gatherers into farmers, domesticating other insects and growing crops for food

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520271289
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 12/01/2011
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 6.90(w) x 9.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Mark W. Moffett, Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution, is the author of The High Frontier: Exploring the Tropical Rainforest Canopy and Face to Face with Frogs. Moffett has received the Explorers Club’s Lowell Thomas Award, the Distinguished Explorer Award from the Roy Chapman Andrews Society, Yale University’s Poynter Fellowship for Journalism, Harvard’s Bowdoin Prize for writing, and many international photography awards.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Travels with My Ants
A Brief Primer on Ants

Marauder Ant, the Ultimate Omnivore
1. Strength in Numbers
2. The Perfect Swarm
3. Division of Labor
4. Infrastructure
5. Group Transport

African Army Ant, Raiders on the Swarm
6. Big Game Hunters
7. Clash of the Titans
8. Notes from Underground

Weaver Ant, Empress of the Air
9. Canopy Empires
10. Fortified Forests
11. Negotiating the Physical World

Amazon Ant, the Slavemaker
12. Slaves of Sagehen Creek
13. Abduction in the Afternoon

Leafcutter Ant, the Constant Gardener
14. A Fungus Farmer’s Life
15. The Origins of Agriculture

Argentine Ant, the Global Invader
16. Armies of the Earth
17. The Immortal Society

Conclusion: Four Ways of Looking at an Ant

Acknowledgments and a Note on Content

Notes

Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Packed with graphic enthusiasm...[and] provocative thoughts. . . . [Moffett] writes with an entertainer's instinct for hooking a restless audience."—New York Times

"[Adventures among Ants] is hefty, yet aerodynamic. It's really good for killing ants."—The Colbert Report

"Take a look at daring eco-adventurer Mark Moffett's spectacular new ant book." - Margaret Atwood—New York Review of Books

"Superb book by a first-class writer with an unsurpassed feel for ants."—Library Journal

"Adventures Among Ants may reach a broader audience than other recent publications and therefore stimulate interest in ants among a new generation."—Bioscience

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