There’s Never Enough Time.

After just 7 days in Portal our trip was over. We did pretty well, with a variety of amazing behaviours of ants in spectacular surroundings.

Frank behaved itself pretty well on location - delivering fantastic smooth moves at ant-eye level with only a few minor hiccups. New cameras using the Panasonic AVC Intra system gave us unprecedented picture quality and ease of recording in the field. With the help of Howard Bourne looking after equipment, Gavin Thurston was able to apply his 25 years experience in close-up filming to produce some incredible images. As ever in Wildlife film making, we had to curtail our ambition and make it fit the small time slot the budget allowed us. We were just getting going when our slot on the calender expired.

As we drove around the Chiricahuas on our way to interstate 10, the sun lit up the clouds in a range of pinks and oranges, silhouetting the nearby peaks in a way that could not have changed much for a million years or so. As the sun rose, very recent changes to the landscape became very visible, roads, a house here, a house there, the odd barn, and of course the interstate at San Simon. On the horizon other mountains rose out of the plains (mostly included in the Coronado National Forest, along with the Chiricahuas), and between them vast dry flat lands with ranches, mines and factories - all full of ants - passed by as we made our way to the airport.

20 cases on the conveyor belt at Tucson and home.

Back To The Desert

About 5 hours South and East of the sweltering heat of Phoenix is a tiny little place called Portal, on the edge of the stunning Chiricahua mountains. Portal has become famous for its ants - not that there is anything particularly special about the ants here - just that there is a research station where some significant ant science was (and is being) conducted, especially experiments which have helped is begin to decipher the complexities of ant chemical communication. Apparently, there are harvester ant nests near here full of little glass beads that were covered in ant pheromones which Deborah Gordon used to work out how the ants knew when they had collected enough food, or when they needed to collect more seeds. This is a significant advance of ant understanding. The casual observer could well conclude that ants have incredible intelligence. And yet it seems they can exhibit complex behaviour with just a simple set of instructions, and a variety of chemical cues.

This morning, these simple instructions led a colony of one species of harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex maricopa - very powerful sting) to attack the nest of the so called long legged ant (no sting). The long legged ants generally like to forage at night, while the maricopas like the heat of the day. They both like similar food, seeds and insects, and technically they share the territory. But when the maricopas get up, they find their patch swarming with long legged ants skirmishes soon break out, leading to a full scale assault from the maricopas who by 8am have driven the long legged ants back into their holes and are swarming around the entrance. Oddly, there don’t seem to be many injuries in these fights, just the occasional antenna or tarsus. But this is exactly the kind of situation where Frankencam excels: Fairly flat, loads of light, bare dirt with no plants in the way.

Incredible images.

We Are Yesterday's News

Although we've been filming out in the National Parks, many of our best moments are coming from parking lots (car parks) and sidewalks (pavements). The desert ants seem quite comfortable just inches from freeways and busy roads. Maybe they depend on insects hit by cars? From an ants perspective, a bit of roadside under neon lights is pretty much the same as a bit of desert under saguaro cactus. They might be city ants, but in the nest their behaviour is no different.

Today we hit the Green Valley headlines
The parking lots here seemed to have some particularly good ant nests and the local newspaper came to see us as we carefully drove our endoscope into an ant nest, to reveal the inner workings of an ant society.

Frankencam's New Operator

Igor and Frankencam together in Arizona

The Inverse Size Law I: Camera Vs Subject.

One of the most unexpected results of close-up photography is that the smaller the subject, the more gear you need to be able to film it. The inverse law of subject size. Hence the 20 cases (er - you took 20 cases to film the lions too - ed). If someone could be bothered, they could make a study of this phenomenon, quantify the relationship, and have an obscure law named after them. For this trip, we are using Frankencam* whenever possible. Frank weighs in at about 40 kilos when fully loaded, whereas the ants weigh around a 500 000th of a kilo.


Frankencam being assembled on a shoot last year

Yesterday, those members of the crew not sure about the value of Frank were finally convinced of the need for a camera that allowed us to be well away from our ant subjects while the tiny camera glided among them. The ants of the day were harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex barbartus in the process of nuptial flights. The males and winged queens come out of the nest, fly off and mate. The males die shortly afterwards, while the queens start new colonies. At this stage in their life cycle, the worker ants are very aggressively defensive and will attack anything that moves.

These harvester ants also have a vicious sting containing the most powerful venom of any animal yet tested. And they really hurt - about two times a bee sting per ant - some of us sustained over 50 stings filming the flying females while Frank was being set up. Swarms of workers would come running out of the nest towards intruders, climbing up legs and stinging as soon as they felt like it.

Incidently, if you are wondering what kind of clothing would be best in this situation, we can tell you that shorts and flip flops probably aren’t ideal, but those of the crew wearing shoes and long trousers got stung at least as much if not more.

Was it worth it? - to see nuptial flights of any species of ant is quite hard. To see it when you want to and have the equipment to film it is practically a miracle.

*Frankencam - affectionately known to us as Frank, is an Ammonite invention, a motion-control device developed over the years to help overcome the various problems associated with filming insects.