Ode To A Fire Ant
There's a stereotype out there of the scientist that paints them as, well, a bit weird. You've all seen the slightly dotty depictions of scientists in countless movies and television shows. Sometimes they are more weird than others, like Doc Brown in the Back to the Future series.
I wonder where that idea comes from.
Consider the lowly fire ant for a moment. Pest or hero? Well, to Walter Tschinkel's way of thinking, the ant is a much maligned creature.
"The fire ant has been accused of almost every heinous act that people have been able to imagine, typically without any careful experimentation," Tschinkel said in an interview. "So there is this tendency to believe fire ants are capable of doing almost anything nasty."
….
"Most people hate fire arts without reservation, without reflection," he wrote. "Perhaps that is what the fire ant has to offer us — something we can all agree to hate, something about whose reprehensibility there is no argument, something we can blame and that won't argue back."
Robert Vander Meer, fire ant research leader for the federal Agriculture Research Services in Gainesville, admires Tschinkel and his work and agreed fire ants bring out people's emotions. But there's good reason for that, he said.
"If it were an innocuous pest then you wouldn't have these emotions," Vander Meer said.
Besides being deadly to people who are allergic, fire ants destroy crops, damage irrigation systems, kill wildlife, short out air conditioning systems and undermine roads with their tunnels, he said.
Between repairing the damage fire ants cause and trying to stop the little buggers, the USDA estimates the price tag at around $6 billion a year.
Tschinkel's book, meanwhile, has received a glowing review from The New York Times, which praised the interludes for offering "a real glimpse of what science is and how it is done."
Harvard professor emeritus E.O. Wilson, who won a Pulitzer Prize with co-author Bert Holldobler in 1991 for "The Ants," wrote the foreword. He called "The Fire Ants" a "masterpiece" and "example of how future biology will be written."
Tschinkel shares the credit with the creatures he loves.
"They have provided me with an almost endless opportunity to engage my curiosity and to delve into the secrets of their lives," he said. "I like them in that sense. They're not cuddly."
My late father-in-law would have had an interesting conversation with the good doctor about fire ants. He had to change a flat tire on his RV down in Texas once. He didn't notice the fire ant nest.
He sang a slightly different song about fire ants than Tschinkel. Let's put it that way, shall we?
By Blackhawk, Sunday, 11 June , 2006 @ 11:23 pm
And what about the pet gators? Don’t they deserve a little sugar too? Oh, that might attract fire ants…and maybe penguins.