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Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari With A Cast Of Trillions (2010)

by Mark W. Moffett(Favorite Author)

4.12 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0520261992 (ISBN13: 9780520261990)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

University of California Press

review 1: Simply a fantasic popular natural history book, just first rate. The text is both informative and accessible, not watered down but just technical enough. The author does a good job of weaving in stories of his trips abroad to study ants and even brings in some humor from time to time along with some of the personalities he met. Having said that, it is a science book, not a travel book, and ants are always the focus. There are gorgeous color photos thoughout the book of the ants, some of them just amazing. Though not a "picture book" per se, it does not lack for photographs, often of ants in action, taking down prey, tending to gardens (yes, gardens), or interacting (or often fighting with, but not always) other ant species. The author divides the book up into six sections ... more(each with 2-5 chapters), each section devoted to a particular type of ant (after a section titled "A Brief Primer on Ants"). Within each section Moffett skillfully uses each ant, each one a "type" of sorts, with a different lifestyle, to make points about other ant species and about ant biology in general. Which sections or rather which ants? The first one is on one he dubbed the marauder ant, found in Asia, the one he spent the most time studying and one he clearly has an affection for. After that we get the African army ant, the weaver ant (fascinating, its lifestyle could not be more different than that of the army ant), the Amazon ant (the slavemaker!), leafcutter ants (my personal favorite), and finally the Argentine ant (the global invader, creator of colonies as big as states, such as the Very Large Colony, a single colony that stretches from the Mexican border to San Fransisco).I had no idea there there was such variety in the ant world. Though not the stars, we get to meet some strange ones indeed. There are cleaner ants of a sort, smaller ants of one species that provide hygenie serves for other ant species. There are ants that free dive into the digestive juices of pitcher plants to retrieve prey (and contrary to what you might think, this actually helps the pitcher plant). There are ants that will kill any vegetation of any type that comes anywhere near "their" acacaia tree that they live on, creating the weird spirit gardens of Peru. There are ants so small that an entire colony can fit inside an acorn. There are even suicide bomber ants. I realize not everyone may be curious about ants, but if you are intereted in natural history I think this book will be something you might want to look into.
review 2: Just a fascinating book! I've always been interested in ants, and liked watching them go about their business. After reading this book, I know now their business is far more complicated and varied than I ever thought! Mark Moffett has been around the world studying different types of ant colonies---some with all different sizes of ants for different jobs, some that use slaves, some that farm, some that engage in warfare---and he writes about all of them with a skilled voice. There are also many pictures of ants in action! I figured out from this reading that the ants I have been seeing on flowers in my back yard are Argentine Army Ants, an invasive species that hasn't been in the Northeast for long. I think anyone reading this will find out other facts they will be enthralled with about the little societies that live under our feet. less

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