Tales from the Ant World, Edward O. Wilson
Tales from the Ant World, Edward O. Wilson
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Tales from the Ant World

Author: Edward O. Wilson

Narrator: Jonathan Hogan

Unabridged: 5 hr 24 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 08/25/2020


Synopsis

Edward O. Wilson recalls his lifetime with ants, from his first boyhood encounters in the woods of Alabama to perilous journeys into the Brazilian rainforest.

“Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony,” writes Edward O. Wilson, one of the world’s most beloved scientists. “Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg.” In Tales from the Ant World, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Wilson takes us on a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico’s Dauphin Island, and even his parent’s overgrown urban backyard, thrillingly relating his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with many of the Earth’s more than 15,000 ant species.

Animating his scientific observations with illuminating personal stories, Wilson homes in on twenty-five ant species to explain how these genetically superior creatures talk, smell, and taste, and more significantly, belong to colonies that fight to determine dominance. Wryly observing that “males are little more than flying sperm missiles” or that ants send their “old ladies” into battle, Wilson eloquently relays his brushes with fire, army, and leafcutter ants, as well as more exotic species. Among them are the very rare matabele, Africa’s fiercest warrior ants, whose female hunters can carry up to fifteen termites in their jaw (and, as Wilson reports from personal experience, have an incredibly painful stinger); Costa Rica’s Basiceros, the slowest of all ants; and New Caledonia’s bull ants, the most endangered of them all, which Wilson discovered in 2011 after over twenty years of presumed extinction.

Tales from the Ant World is a fascinating, if not occasionally hair-raising, personal account by one of our greatest scientists and a necessary volume for any lover of the natural world.

About Edward O. Wilson

Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Anthill, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Conquest of Nature. The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he was a professor emeritus at Harvard University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jamie on May 11, 2021

This is a charming valedictory work by Edward Wilson, after decades of academic study and teaching. It is a genial book written for the general reader and for the most part requires no scientific background. Its short chapters focus on ants’ amazing, amusing, or peculiar behaviors, but it is not a m......more

Goodreads review by Moonkiszt on March 06, 2021

And now for something completely different! I have a grandson who is serious when he states that one of his choices for a future career is to be a myrmecologist. And what, dear reader is a myrmecologist? An ant expert. . . .grandson's hero is the author of this book, Edward O. Wilson. We listened to......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on April 25, 2021

Oddly enough, I wasn't aware of ants as stinging insects. I thought they just bit. This explains why, when brushing up against an ant covered hollyhock plant by the back gate, and getting covered with angry ants, it felt like I was getting stung. At the time I thought gee, they sure are agressive bi......more

Goodreads review by RDawkins on January 25, 2021

Excellent! EO Wilson demonstrates why he is the greatest entomologist who ever lived. A highly readable and engaging book on his career as a myrmecologist. His passion for ants is unparalleled and should serve as an influence to all future biologists. He eloquently writes about his time spent in the......more

Goodreads review by David on August 02, 2021

I was expecting and hoping for a general A to Z about ants with a few offbeat tidbits thrown in for good measure. The book is mostly tidbits and that was disappointing to me. As I read the book I imagined how much more I would have enjoyed the perspective of a curious outsider, someone like John McP......more