Ant. It’s What’s For Dinner
Driving along on this highway
All these cars and upon the sidewalk
People in every direction
No words exchanged, no time to exchange and when
All the little ants are marching
Red and black antennae waving
They all do it the same
They all do it the same way
(Dave Matthews, Ants Marching)
Forget everything you've heard about Colombia's big export crops. Cocaine? Not even important. Coffee? A blip in the great scheme. The real money is in ants. No cultivation needed. All you have to do is catch them and sell them to really stupid gringos people from other countries! But not just any ants. They have to be the kind that are charmingly referred to as "big butt ants".
BARICHARA, Colombia - The first loud crackle tastes and feels like popcorn, but by the time the juices spray wildly in your mouth and the filament-like legs slide down your throat, there's no mistaking this toasted ant queen.
The people of sun-soaked northern Colombia have been eating ants for centuries. They believe the accurately named "hormiga culona" — big-butt queen ant — is everything from a natural form of Viagra to a protein-rich defense against cancer.
Now the invertebrates are going global: A businessman in Santander province exported more than 880 pounds of the inch-long queen ants last year, many of them to be hand-dipped in Belgian chocolate and sold in fancy packaging at $8 for a half dozen at upscale London department stores like Harrods and Fortnum & Mason.
But even as the delicacy begins to expand beyond Colombia, the ants appear to be dwindling in Santander, and that worries the region's ant-eating bipeds.
This year's harvest, which usually begins around Easter and lasts as late as June, was one of the worst on record, with peasants in the artist colony of Barichara reporting half their normal year's haul.
Entomologists say the winter was unusually harsh and spring rains were late, which may have disturbed the virgin queen ants' nuptial flights — the one time a year when they emerge from their dune-like ant hills to seek a mate and form a new colony. Almost as often, the queens are grabbed by lizards, birds or humans.
Expanding fields of beans, tomatoes and tobacco also have replaced the region's last remaining wilderness and farmers consider the leaf-cutting ants — the species atta laevigata — to be serious pests.
"It's an age-old dilemma for the farmer — should I kill it or eat it?" said Andres Santamaria, who was given a $40,000 grant from Santander's government to develop an environmentally sustainable, export-oriented program for breeding the ants.
Hey! Why not both? Kill it and eat it, too! But the people who really, really enjoy these? More than anyone apparently?
"In France, they're so highly regarded people started calling them the caviar of Santander," said Stephane Le Tirant, curator at the Montreal Insectarium.
During harvest time in Santander, ants by the bagful are sold at almost every roadside stop. But although relatively abundant, they're not cheap — costing as much as $11 a pound.
The culona is a source of regional pride, its image gracing everything from the logo of a long-distance bus company to the provincial La Culona lottery. It also connects locals to the province's indigenous past, when ants were a part of a complex mating ritual of the Guane Indians.
Rising demand from the outside has helped push up prices that peasant harvesters are getting.
"A few years ago they cost half as much," said Hernando Medina, the province's main exporter.
Ah, the French. Me, I'll have a nice steak. Beef steak, please.
Weird Stuff, World news | Gaius Saturday, 12 August , 2006
By Dean Esmay, Saturday, 12 August , 2006 @ 7:43 pm
Believe it or not, Americans are actually a little odd for not eating bugs. Most people in the world do, and don’t regard it as odd.
By Gaius, Saturday, 12 August , 2006 @ 7:46 pm
I’d as soon be odd, then! My wife eats escargot and I cringe.
By Yehudit, Saturday, 12 August , 2006 @ 9:17 pm
I remember going to the supermarket with my mom when I was 10 or so, and seeing a tin of chocolate-covered ants in the gourmet section. I slipped it into the cart but she caught before it got rung up. This was in the 60s, so the concept had been introduced by then.
By Gaius, Saturday, 12 August , 2006 @ 9:27 pm
I actually remember seeing them from about that time period myself. It was in the gourmet foods section of the high-end department store my best friend’s Mom worked at. Both he and I were doing that kid thing: “Eyew! Gross!”
Heh - maybe I still am!