When I was a kid, my imagination of Army ants had several components: first, anything with “army” in its name was cool; plus, they were scary but small enough that I thought I could deal with them one at a time like Superman. Fast forward to being an adult: while we were exploring the Peruvian jungle, a guide put a stick in a hole and when he pulled it out, to my pleasure there was an enormous Army ant marching from end to end. It was the length of a child’s finger with massive pincers. The guide told us a single bite is equivalent to 20 bee stings then he quickly threw the stick down. I can see how an army of them could take down and eat small animals. However, in this scenario, I'm the one who did the eating.
Eating normal-sized ants is nothing special, kind of like chocolate-covered raisins but with ants. However, once you’ve seen an Amazon Army ant in real life, eating one can be downright scary. I wanted to try so I kept my eyes open and while we were in town until I spotted a guy on the side of the road selling bags of dried Army ants for 2 sols (60 cents). I didn't even hesitate; bought a bag, poured one into the palm of my hand and popped it in my mouth. It was lightly salted, crunchy, not the least bit chewy, thank god; pretty good, really, and a satisfactory human victory over ants. Impressed, I bought one embedded in resin for my bug collection back home, and I brought a few to snack on in the plane.
Army Ants (March 30, 2018)
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Martin Hash
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Army Ants (March 30, 2018)
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Shamedia, Shamdemic, Shamucation, Shamlection, Shamconomy & Shamate Change
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TheReal_ND
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Re: Army Ants (March 30, 2018)
Army Ant protein shakes when?
