Via Queen of Formicidae by ~Y-Ikeda on deviantART.

Low Anthem “Charle Darwin” from Lake Fever Sessions on Vimeo.

Set the sails I feel the winds a’stirring
Toward the bright horizon set the way
Cast your reckless dreams upon our Mayflower
Haven from the world and her decay

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
Fighting for a system built to fail
Spooning water from their broken vessels
As far as I can see there is no land

Oh my god, the waters all around us
Oh my god, it’s all around

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
The lords of war just profit from decay
And trade their children’s promise for the jingle
The way we trade our hard earned time for pay

Oh my god, the waters cold and shapeless
Oh my god, it’s all around
Oh my god, life is cold and formless
Oh my god, it’s all around

“Alex Wild, Annie Liebowitz to the arthropods” – Carl Zimmer

via Beautifying Bedbugs | The Loom | Discover Magazine.

Moldovan photographer, Bolucevschi Vitali, has won the title of CIWEM’s Environmental Photographer of the Year 2009. His picture, Talking About Stars, also won the Natural World category. Only 24 years old, the amateur photographer described how he was able to take his winning image: “On a sunny day I took a camera and set out to photograph something of the life of ants. At first I was no good as the ants moved very quickly and I was easily distracted. But gradually I was drawn to a group which was climbing up a nearby dandelion. They would each pull out one seed and then parachute to the ground”

They are Formica ants or “wood ants”. Can’t tell which species from here.

via CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year 2009 competition winners – Telegraph.

Update September 16th, 2009: A friend of mine ask me if the ants were really parachuting and if I had heard of this behavior before. The answer was that I had never heard of this before, but my guess is that the ant just pulls the seed out forcefully and falls to the ground, seed in mouth, as it looses her balance. A beautiful accident.

In this fantastically rendered futuristic landscape, from the mind of Ricky Parker, mechanical ants fight mechanical termites over the dominion of the forest.

In the realm of organic insects this kind of insect wars happen every day. The outcome of these battles are usually not pretty for the termites though. Many species of ants are specialized termite predators and will raid the termite’s nests to carry back the paralyzed or freshly killed prey to feed their larva.

Would mechanical ants carry back the spared parts to build more of themselves?

I particularly like the balance between anatomical detail and artistic interpretation, as one can recognize in the sculptures all the essential characteristics of an ant.

Part of her inspiration, she explains, comes from the social nature of ants, something she reflects in the composition of an egg-laying queen being attended by three workers.

The impression in real life must be fantastic. I hope some Museum of Natural History of similar research institution decides to purchase and display some of this work at their entrance yard.

You can see more of these great bronze sculptures in this brochure (pdf) of one of her exhibits at Dubai.

Queen with three of the colony. Sculptures by Susan P. Cochran.