Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Did You Know The Red Ant Gets Rid of Termites?

Did you know the red ant that gets rid of termites?

We just watched a show on Nova tonight. It took place somewhere in Africa. (I missed the beginning of the show, so do not know where.) There was a small village that was being devastated by termites. There was an old man who knew how to get rid of the termites. It was by using a red ant that he called the Jaklava. We saw what all these people went through to get the red ant. It was absolutely fascinating watching them use prayers and red ocher to entice the ants. When they man placed the red ants in the tunnel with the termites, it was amazing to see the small ants do battle and chase away the termites. The way this people is intertwined with the insects and all other life around them was astounding.

5 comments:

fobsgonewild said...

i saw this last night too and was tryin to find out more info and found your post!

Anonymous said...

Getting help from one critter to take care of a problem with another one. Reminds me of the old miners in the deserts in our southwest who would keep a coatamundi for a pet and it would take care of their rat and mouse problem.

silken said...

very cool ashish! my husband and kids were watching and saying how interesting it was, so I sat down w/ them to watch.

it was very interesting. I don't know the actual name of the red ant though! glad you stopped by and left a comment! :)

silken said...

I had to look up coatimundi, I thought it was a snake, but was pleasantly surprised! :)

my f-i-l says he keeps a snake in the attic to help w/ the mouse problem! :)

William said...

Hi. It's spelled "jaglavak"

Nova has a great site on the Mofu and Jaglavak
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ants/mofu.html