The Daily Ant

It has recently been brought to my attention that there may be followers of this now-defunct blog that are not aware of the newer, greater myrmecological endeavor that has been up and running strong for the past 6 months or so: Check out The Daily Ant for all your fantastic formicid news!

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Teaching in China!

Although this blog has been very quiet recently due to the busyness of my schedule, FF is not dead. In fact, I now have a second blog that will cover my experience teaching in Cili, China.  This blog will, of course, continue to cover ants and other entomological things.

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Mosquito in Flight

Mosquitos are not nearly as awesome as ants, and they are pretty much evil (as I establish here). But a new study on this family of insects has revealed how mosquitos fly in the rain – the video in the article is rather fascinating.

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I’ve Got Rhythm – So Does Nature

NPR has an intriguing clip about shared rhythm in nature and composed works: here. Not about ants, but interesting, nonetheless!

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Photographs by FF

Formicidae Fantasy now has a new tab: “Images”. In it, you will find images. I don’t have too many at this point, but I hope to expand my collection in the future. Enjoy!

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New Look

I’ve decided to try out a new look for Formicidae Fantasy. I hope that my many readers will not find this too shocking! I haven’t settled on a banner image yet, but the current one has ants, so I certainly could do worse.

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Cool Video

This is awesome. Found at Myrmecos, from YouTube.

A general premise of mine is that ants > toad bugs > other insects > spiders, but this video is, perhaps, evidence to the contrary.

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A Poem

Discovered via Futility Closet, the best non-entomological blog on the Interwebz:

A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned his brain;
The cause of his sorrow
Was paradichloro-
Diphenyltrichloroethane.

– Anonymous

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane is better known as DDT. But this mosquito can’t complain to me – I use cyanide in my kill jar!

(Incidentally, Wikipedia thinks cyanide is no longer used in kill jars due to “extreme toxicity”, but a few specimens of mine would beg to differ…)

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Kondrashov Korner

I had the pleasure this semester to take the course Evolution with Dr. Kondrashov, with whom I share the state of being half-Jewish. He’s kind of like a Russian Santa Claus, and he carries a giant metal pole to point at the slides on the projector. Dr. Kondrashov, beyond having a cool accent and teaching with a unique style, is an accomplished evolutionary biologist, with several publications in Nature among other journals. He also delivers such precious gems as “Whoever is the GSI please give extra points for this purple dinosaur” and “If I removed all my clothes and told you about my health, that would probably be inappropriate.”
Unfortunately, artists are rarely famous in their own time, and this professor is no exception. I present now some of his more famous works, reproduced below, from his essays on lecture topics that he assigned for required reading.

Addressing the intuitiveness of relatedness between parents and offspring:

Describing the initially surprising claim of macroevolution:

Explaining why supernatural claims aren’t used in court:

Self-explanatory:

Alas, Dr. Kondrashov only taught the first half of the course. Who knows what artistic marvels might have been?

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