Fit Wit
How many times your own weight can you lift and carry? If it’s less than 5,000 times your own weight, you’re a pathetic weakling compared to ants.
You know what else they can do? They can walk nearly 4 miles per day. If you’re an active person, that doesn’t sound like much but if you figure the comparative length of their legs with those of a human, that would be like you or me walking to Omaha every day. And I don’t even know where you live! That’s how cool ants are.
Other astounding ant facts include that there is an estimated one quadrillion of them (that’s a million billion or some other meaningless number like that) and yet they have done nothing to damage the environment or contribute to climate change. Not one catastrophic oil spill can be attributed to ants and they have never contaminated groundwater, which we humans have done plenty of times in dozens (or hundreds?) of ways, including our feeble efforts to get rid of ants with pesticides. And that brings us to maybe my favorite cool fact about ants: they’ve never tried to get rid of us with pesticides or anything else.
Now, you might be thinking that in comparison to ants, humans are crap. Well, yes, in the ways I just mentioned, we are. But because this is the realm of opposites and everything is composed of both light and dark, ants also have a dark side, just like us.
For one, they pretty regularly wage wars with other colonies of ants, killing them mercilessly without regard for women, children, the elderly, or the disabled. (Being how badass strong they are, I have no idea how they kill each other in these wars. Maybe they throw rocks that weigh 5000 times what an ant weighs at each other?)
Furthermore, they also have a brutal caste system that is impossible to break out of and in which, most ants are treated like slaves, either for labor or sex. And you can forget about a race- or gender-inclusive work environment. Ants have never even heard of that.
And some species of ants have a wicked bite that stings like a mofo and hurts much longer than it needs to. For their purposes, the molten-lava-mixed-with-jalapeño-juice effect of their bite would be just as effective if it only lasted three minutes, but no, it lasts around ten times that long. For you readers who are too lazy to switch to your calculator app, that’s half an hour of misery! Sure, a human bite can also be nasty, but at least it doesn’t just burn like crazy for half an hour.
I think that just about covers what I’ve been thinking about ants lately. I’ll conclude this entirely-too-long post with the following charming story from my real life:
Every morning I walk my two dogs a couple/three miles, part of which is through a sort of wild desert area with a lot of big, red, stinging ants. All three of us have been bitten (which is how I wrote that dramatically hyphenated and completely realistic description of what it feels like, above) so I keep a sharp eye out for them. You can walk through their territory but if you stop, they’ll go for you. Since my dogs are often too busy reading pee-mail to notice the ants, when I see either of them stop in an area with ants in evidence, I say, “hormigas!” and they instantly trot away. At times like this, I’m amazed at how smart dogs are. I mention this because of all the commands I’ve tried to teach them, this is the only one that works unfailingly. Hormiga is the Spanish word for ant, if you didn’t know, and I chose it because if I shouted, “ants!” they might think I said “pants” or “dance” and who knows what kind of behavior it would invoke.
Sadly, I don’t think my dogs have any idea how amazing ants are in other ways. At times like this, I’m amazed at how stupid dogs are. Light and dark.
If you’re like me, all this talk of superpowered insects makes me ready to read Wayno’s Bizarro cartoons for the week. Let’s do that now!…
I’m both skinny and goofy looking so I think I’d need both of those props.
My birthday is coming up and I’d really like one of those dressforms with the eyeball at the top. Just saying.
Strangely, nesting dolls were originally invented for smuggling smaller dolls.
In the not too distant future, I predict that most households will have one or more K2 brand domestic robots. I just hope we can keep them out of jail.
As one who has slathered his fingers in peanut butter and tried to shove a pill down his dogs’ throats, I really love this gag. In the spirit of callback humor, one of my favorite bits of Spanish is “mantequilla de cacahuate,” which means peanut butter. Here in Mexico, they more commonly call it “crema de cacahuate” but that’s not as much fun to say. I do not shout either of those expressions at my dogs because they would think it was time for medicine.
The fact that there was a liquor store on the island explains a lot about Gilligan’s behavior.
We’re wrapping it up for this week, Jazz Pickles. Thanks for putting your finger on the ribbon while we tied the knot. Wayno has some fun things to relate on his cartoon blog post this week, including where he got the name Wayno. Be sure to have a look and to groove to the week’s musical selection he always includes at the end. This week’s is funky!
Until next time, HORMIGAS!
BIZARRO SHOP Fun and cheap!
… Bizarro TIP JAR One-time or repeating. Your choice!
…Signed, numbered, limited edition prints and original Bizarro panels