Leaf-cutters, weavers, acrobats, carpenters, and harvesters - ants
all, and Hoyt gets their measure in this extraordinary tour
d'horizon of an ant's life. Hoyt, who made his naturalist's name
writing of leviathans (The Whale Called Killer, 1981, etc.), turns
now to motes, in whose realm he is just as comfortable and
inspired; he fashions the ants into enchanting creatures: busy,
busy, busy, always hunting and gathering, jousting and warring,
executing and slaving. And that's just the surface, for what goes
on in underground nests is even more astounding. In the dark,
fungal gardens grow in the 2,000-room mansions that house a queen
and her millions of workers. But Hoyt does much more than simply
tabulate one wild ant-fact after another. He charts their daily
toils and dramas, sketches their biological and sociological
frames, then from these foundations spins theories of evolution,
behavior, ecology, and chemical communication. Myrmecologists E.O.
Wilson and William L. Brown Jr. figure prominently in Hoyt's tale
(inevitably, since they are to ants as Audubon is to birds). They
prove to be as curious as their quarry ("warm and funny, yet
strange and obsessive," in Hoyt's words), two gents prone to such
comments as "Pardon me while I have good drool" (said while poking
through an ant midden in the field) or "He's going to sting me.
He's stinging me. Oh, I've been stung." Wilson's travails as the
father of sociobiology, bugbear of the left in the 1970s, are
thoughtfully raked over. Best of all is Hoyt's chronicling of an
ant's day afield: "A worker ant . . . stands on the leaf of a
low-growing bush. . . . The air is pungent with leaf sap. As it
drips from the leaf, she stops to lick a drop or two for
refreshment." Readers get right down on all six to join the action.
Fabulous stuff, commandingly told with wit, color, and grace.
(Kirkus Reviews)
This is a close-up look at the world of ants. Erich Hoyt recounts
observations from an ant expedition to the tropical jungle with
Edward O. Wilson. He introduces ants who harvest crops, raise
insects as livestock, build roads and bridges, embark on nuptial
fights and go to war.
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