- This topic is empty.
Herculean ant …..a la Mark Twain
-
I watched this struggle for several minutes while the ant dragged its booty (a pupa?) across about 3 feet
of paved area in my garden. By the time I decided to get my camera there was no time for fiddling or
adjustments for a better shot before the performance disappeared among bordering plants.
Anyway, this episode reminded me of a Mark Twain essay on the topic which I read many years ago and
which I was lucky enough to Google. Thinking it worth sharing, I’ve included an extract from it (below the picture).
Extract from essay:
……..by and by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old
ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it originally lay, the two perspiring ants
inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after all, and
then each starts off in a different direction to see if he can’t find an old nail or something else that is
heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it.There in the Black Forest, on the mountain side, I saw an ant go through with such a performance as this with
a dead spider of fully ten times his own weight. The spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to resist. He
had a round body the size of a pea. The little ant–observing that I was noticing–turned him on his back, sunk
his fangs into his throat, lifted him into the air and started vigorously off with him, stumbling over little pebbles, stepping on the spider’s legs and tripping himself up, dragging him backwards, shoving him bodily ahead,
dragging him backwards, shoving him bodily ahead, dragging him up stones six inches high instead of
going around them, climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping from their summits ,–and
finally leaving him in the middle of the road to be confiscated by any other fool of an ant that wanted him.
I measured the ground which this ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what he had accomplished
inside of twenty minutes would constitute some such job as this,–relatively speaking,–for a man; to-wit: to
strap two eight-hundred pound horses together, carry then eighteen hundred feet, mainly over (not around)
bowlders averaging six feet high, and in the course of the journey climb up and jump from the top of one
precipice like Niagara, and three steeples, each a hundred and twenty feet high; and then put the horses down,
in an exposed place, without anybody to watch them, and go off to indulge in some other idiotic miracle for
vanity’s sake.
Mark TwainLovely, eh?
Glad you liked that Mark Twain excerpt, Alan, and thanks for letting me know,
Tom.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
