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Stories Ants Tell Around Campfires at Night

March 17, 2005 - -

I just happened across a great quote from Dave Barry and a related link. It has to do with the decapitating phroid fly, which has been imported into Florida in an attempt to control the population of fire ants.

How a phorid fly controls fire ants is, first the female phorid fly swoops in on a fire ant and, in less than a tenth of a second, injects an egg into the ant's midsection. When the egg hatches, the maggot crawls up inside the ant, and - here is the good part - eats the entire contents of the ant's head. This poses a serious medical problem for the ant, which, after walking around for a couple of weeks with its insides being eaten, has its head actually fall off. Meanwhile, inside the detached head, the maggot turns into a fly, and, when it's ready, crawls out and goes looking for more ants.

Dave, who certainly likes commas, then references a url which appears to have been a broken link. But I searched and found the new location here.

The video, which has a soundtrack of wild, jungle-style drum music, shows female flies zipping around fire ants like tiny fighter planes, giving the ants FITS. The video also shows how, when a fly isn't fast enough, it gets turned into Purina Ant Chow.
Comments on Stories Ants Tell Around Campfires at Night
 
Comment Thu, March 17 - 12:22 PM by tagger
. . . And the ants can light the camp fires around which they tell these stories because they're fire ants, right? Get it? Huh? FIRE ants! Ha-ha.

Gawd -- I just crack me up!