Customer Reviews

Adventures Among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions

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From a cover that looks like a 1950's B-movie poster, to Mark Moffett's amazing photos and very fun text, Adventures Among Ants is the most exciting natural history book I've seen this season. Moffett is a quirky combination of photographer, biologist, and explorer. To mix categories even further, he's been called both the Indiana Jones of entomology and the Jane Goodall of ants. He's also one of E.O. Wilson's favorite photographers.

But I have to say, it's Mark's easy, thoughtful, and incredibly engaging writing style that makes this a wonderful book. I've already bought two copies, one for me and one for our local nature center. And then there's my older brother, my nephews, my.....

This is an absolutely wonderful and absorbing book of the scientist in Mark Moffett, who also happens to be a first-rate photographer and journalist at National Geographic Magazine. It is a sumptuous combination of images, vivid descriptions with many funny personal asides, and state-of-the-art discoveries taking place in the world of ants. Unlike his previous book on rainforest researchers, this book is far more science than journalism.

The story is Moffett's search to uncover the logic behind the unbelievably complex actions of ant societies. Starting out as a student entomologist with dreams of exploring the wild like Jane Goodall, he gains entry first into the inner sanctum of EO Wilson's world - one of the greatest scientists alive - and then, with his field research and images to record proof for his research, he gets the attention of one of the greatest science editors alive, Mary G. Smith of National Geographic. For all those who hope to make a living pursuing what they love, this kind of ready access is as astonishing as it is frustrating. That being said, Moffett had the talent to deserve it.

On the scientific side, he provides a portrait of the parameters of ant behavior. With communication via pheromone trails and their physical abilities, ants have a certain range within which they can operate - restricted yet incredibly varied. Moffett investigates their hunting strategies and diets, their habitats, their degrees of physical variation (a function of specialization that limits flexibility yet adds efficiency), and patterns of behavior. What emerges is a kind of collective mind, governed by tiny decisions, such that the actions of each ant colony appears to resemble those of a super-organism rather than a collection of individuals. He illustrates these ideas by direct observation in the field, all over the world. It is a dazzling tour of the cutting-edge. He also peppers the text with hilariously apt literary quotations and allusions.

One of the great things about this book is how rigorous his scientific method is. He never indulges in the facile speculations you find so often in mediocre journalistic sources like Wired, but sticks to what can be proven and observed while paying attention to theories that he explains with extraordinary lucidity. I think he succeeds in conveying how real science is far more interesting than pseudo-science and not in the least dry. It is a great intellectual adventure, full of inspiration and exceptionally hard work over long hours in exotic (and often uncomfortable) environments.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in entomology, the scientific method, and the excitement of discovery and exploration. It is an excellent gift book (on heavy, glossy paper for photo quality) to everyone from the highly educated and intellectually curious to children ready to explore new horizons.

This is an extremely impressive book in just about every way. It has a clever and beautifully designed jacket (like a movie poster for Pixar: "Cast of Trillions"!); the page layouts are crisp and artful; the colored fonts for headings are artistic without being glaring; the text is very well edited and proofed; the many color plates of the ants are world class (Moffett has done photography for National Geographic which features some of the best nature photography anywhere); the writing engages the reader and is dense with information and adventure. Yes, adventure as in the title.

With this book I believe that Mark Moffett will emerge as a superstar among naturalists. In addition to being a world class photographer whose photographs of ants are unique in their clarity and expressiveness, he is an intrepid traveler and explorer who has visited every continent except Antarctica looking for ants. (He'd probably go there too if there were any ants!) He has bivouacked on numerous islands as well, including Malaysia and Easter Island where he found that the island has become overrun with Argentine ants, the little black ants that live in our lawns and kitchens. But more than anything Moffett is a first class biologist who specializes in myrmecology and loves it.

Consequently this book is a tour de force, the result of many years of study, exploration and just plain hard work in difficult circumstances in jungles and other terrain the world over. The energy of that work comes gushing out of the pages in a torrent with enough force to make the reader enter not only the world of the ant but the world of the scientist who studies the ant and to realize the incredible labor that went into its production. The work requires the ability to endure hardships in the outdoors in all sorts of weather during long nights as well as sweltering days with patience and discipline, distant from the comforts of home in primitive and dangerous places.

Ah, to be young again and to embark upon such adventures!

The book is organized into six main parts: marauder ants, African army (driver) ants, weaver ants, Amazon slave master ants, leafcutter ants, and the ant that is taking over a good portion of the world, the Argentine ant. It was to this latter chapter that I first turned when I opened the book because I've had my own adventures among ants and most of those adventures involved Linepithema humile (formerly known as Iridomyrmex humilis) the Argentine ant which has taken over most of California where I live and a goodly part of the rest of the country.

If you have ants in the house and can't get rid of them, chances are they are Argentine ants. Moffett's two chapters on Linepithema humile explain why they have become so prolific, how they got started here and why you and the local "Bugs R Us" aren't likely to get rid of them. Small, blackish without much ability to bite (actually I have been bitten by Argentine ants, but their bite can't even get through the skin), their main trick is a kind of maniacal persistence that starves or otherwise out-competes other kinds of ants. Moffett estimates that the Very Large Colony(my "friends" for decades) in California may approach a trillion individuals spread across a thousand kilometers from San Diego in the south to Sacramento and beyond in the north.

One of things that Moffett confirmed is that Argentine ants milk aphids. I had a small vegetable garden and found aphids on my plants seemingly tended by Argentine ants. Moffett, who went to Argentine to study the ants in their ancestral home (so to speak) however did not quite confirm my belief that the ants become more active in the hot, dry summers not in a frantic search for water as some people believe but because that is the best time to forage for carrion which they love and that is the season when the waters recede. Of course Argentine ants do need water and thrive when they can get it, which is one of the reasons they flourish in our watered lawns.

My favorite part of the book though was the part on the New World leafcutter ants. To me they are the most sophisticated and most interesting of the many kinds of ants. Their underground fungal gardens and nest as described by Moffett "can extend 7 meters into the earth and contain nearly eight thousand chambers." (pp. 170-171) Their jaws are like can openers with "a zinc content of 30 to 40 percent." (p. 171) Surprisingly the adult workers get most of their energy from the sap of the leaves they cut. The protein-rich fungus in their gardens is mainly for their larvae and attendants. (p. 172) Their trunk trails are so wide and well maintained (to allow them to easily carry their "parasols" of leaves) that Moffett once mistook a trunk trail for a narrow human pathway and got momentarily lost. Additionally once he unknowingly pitched his tent on a nocturnal route only to be awakened in the night by rain seeping in because the ants had cut open his tent to maintain the trunk trail! (p. 179)

Moffett points to the similarities between humans and ants, and to the differences. Like Bert Holldobler and Edward O. Wilson before him, he refers to ant colonies as superorganisms while in the final chapter giving us four ways of looking at ants.

First there is the ant as an individual. Unlike most of us, Moffett has stared at ants for so many hours that he can see something like individual personalities. Second there is the ant colony as a society whose individuals respond to each other (mainly through touch and pheromones). Third there is the idea of the ant colony as an organism with individual ants being the equivalent of the cells in our bodies that comprise organs and then a unified whole. And fourth, there is the ant colony as a mind. This comes from the idea of swarm intelligence in which the actions of individual ants combine automatically without leadership to produce the intelligent behavior of the entire colony.

An interesting question is, could it be the case sometime in the distant future or elsewhere on another planet that there may develop swarm-intelligent superorganisms that are smarter than humans, and prove it by developing a more advanced culture?


The World Is Not as We Think It Is

This book is an astounding conclusion to a lifelong passion, and we are all the richer for Mark Moffett's accomplishments as a photographer, naturalist and scientist! Other books on ants have appeared this year, but none with breathtaking photographs such as these. While personal and narrative, Moffett's book is scholarly enough to satisfy the more entomologically serious reader. A million thanks for this chef d'oeuvre!

A Global Safari with a cast of Trillions








Flat out, this is the most fascinating non-fiction title I've read this year. Ants are seldom seen as fascinating, more like a nuisance! However, this book makes me almost wish for an ant invasion, just to try and observe some of the details the Moffett describes in his worldwide studies on ants.




The text contains lots of surprises as it covers various species of ants, and I can't scratch the surface of all the funny and also disquieting details about these creatures. He first discusses marauder ants, who can be classified in three sizes: the largest is 50 times larger than the smallest, and often serves as a `bus' to carry smaller ants to new locations. Most ants are female, they can live upwards of two years, and their behavior as workers for the colony is altruistic. The worker ants do not reproduce, and thus do not compete for food. In fact, he describes the male ants (that resemble wasps) as `socially useless', and confined to being sperm donors.




Their travel in columns is well-known, but how they find food and relay the information to the workers is unique. They emit a "recruitment" pheromone that immediately tells ants in the vicinity that food is near, and within seconds a full swarm goes into attack mode, retrieving the food and taking it back for storage. But what is more fascinating is the Pharoah ant that also has a "don't bother" pheromone that it emits when the food is gone, so that no ants waste their time.




The paths that ants use are actually ant roads, they reuse them as needed, rather than just randomly traveling over earth (as it would appear). Some ants have coordinated group attacks that allow them to overcome much larger prey simply by virtue of their large numbers rather than a stinger Army ants are useful in some ways because they clear out vermin, such as roaches and mice, from the vicinity. Driver ants can overtake a monkey corpse and reduce it to bone in just a few days. More interesting is that driver ants can play dead, for sufficiently long periods of time to allow them to escape.





Weaver ants were possibly the most fascinating to me, as they literally sew leaves together (see photo at right). The ants grab a leaf as a team, and another ant picks up a larva (basically a baby ant) that exudes silk and uses the silk as thread to create nests that can last for years. Argentine ants are battling a dangerous war in Southern California, as the colonies actually raise and "herd" aphids. Aphids in oversized numbers then attack local plants. This leads to the death of important indigenous plants that serve to provide pollen to the region, and upwards through the food chain different species are affected by the invasive species.




The writing style is witty and fast-paced. The author's enthusiasm is contagious, and the details never get too cumbersome or so overly scientific that you end up bored. Great photographs that enlarge the ants to a bigger size make the details that much more fascinating

Every so often in life we have the opportunity to encounter the Real Deal: someone who never sold out, never compromised, never wavered from the True Path of his conviction. After hearing him interviewed on NPR, I bought Mark Moffett's amazing book on Amazon and never could put it down. With a dry sense of humor, very accurate and detailed (yet readable) science, and incredible photography, Mark brings the world of ants up close for us to appreciate the incredible capacities of the "super organism:" the concept of the entire colony as a creature unto itself. Seen this way, the ant colony acquires a kind of personality and intelligence.

To say Dr. Moffett has "paid his dues" is a vast understatement. He has hung hundreds of feet in tropical rainforests. He has stood in sweltering heat for days at a time. He has been bitten/stung by most every kind of ant (although it's a bit sadistic, I admit I felt a certain disappointment at his near-miss with the legendary bullet ant), and can and does compare the various scars he bears from his beloved subjects. Red fire ants have "painful" stings, as his amazing photo with a drop of poison hanging from the ant's stinger tip shows. Leaf-cutter ants have no stinger, but tend to slash you, leaving you covered with the equivalent of dozens of paper cuts. Marauder ants, (when you smash into their nest, mind you) tend to swarm over you, find the exposed skin, and bite like crazy. We expected this. But we didn't know that one ant always stays behind, hidden until hours later when/where you are least expecting it (like when you are talking to two Australian ladies trying to impress them). Chomp. Ouch!

How could I not mention the 51 hours he spent in a chair once, watching a marauder ant "trunk line" (highway) to see the beginnings of a nascent swarm raid? Or his careful removal of ants, one by one, from the front of an Amazon ant swarm, in order to find the "leader?" (he did). How he named the ants in his favorite nest when he was a boy? He describes standing for hours in the rainforest watching ants with his arms held out at his sides... because he was COVERED with sweat wasps and killer bees literally licking the sweat from his skin, and being unable to drop his arms for fear of triggering a sting-fest. This guy is more than the "Jane Goodall of ants:" he is also the Indiana Jones of ants! (although you get the sense that, while he loves adventure, it is ALL about the science; there is no sense of self-aggrandizement here.) He will no doubt go down as one of the great naturalists of all time, and he continues to win awards for his explorations and scientific discoveries (including many species previously unknown). He is the Real Deal. If you love nature, then get this book!

From being the curator of the legendary ant collection at Harvard, to his many National Geographic articles and his work with the Smithsonian now, this is a one-of-a-kind adventurer and storyteller and scientist, yet he never makes the reader feel out of the action. Moffett carefully explains the science behind everything he does (and on this level, again, he is no "soldier of fortune," because it really all IS in the name of the purest science). He could easily make us feel intellectually inferior, yet he takes pains to make sure we are following the explanation... his legendary patience comes through in his writing.

If I had to suggest a way to improve this excellent book, I would say MORE ANT PHOTOS! This man is gifted with the camera. Wow.

And yes, I agree with the reviewer who said the description of Mark's wedding - naked on the edge of an Easter Island volcano - is worth the price of the book alone!

in addition to the superb photos the narrative is insightful and interesting in some places quite vivid. the discription of the author's wedding ceremony is worth the price of the book

In recent years, insects have had a run of luck with their Boswells (or perhaps Homers). Accomplished scientists have given us engaging accounts of their wonderful worlds - people not just nature-loving prose artists nor those drawing lessons about what we humans do, should do, or should not do. My favorites (in no particular order) are Howard Ensign Evans, May Berenbaum, Bernt Heinrich, Thomas Eisner, Edward O. Wilson, and Gilbert Waldbauer. To these I can now add Mark W. Moffett - he writes about ants as ants, not surrogate people or exemplars of any particular virtue beyond evolutionary success. And, in the process, he provides enjoyment and education. As a bonus, one gets quite a fine view of the rewards and viscissitudes of doing biology in the field. His pictures, incidentally, are superb, making this as beautiful as what passes for a coffee table book - but with real substance.

Mark Moffett is a rarity among modern authors and in this book he is at the top of his game. Photographer, adventurer, world class explorer, and leading researcher. All of his skills have been combined in one book, driven by a writing style that is incredibly accessible despite the cutting edge science which is being explained. This is a must-have book for any serious reader of science or adventure.

This is a brilliantly produced tome. The images are superbly executed examples of modern macro photography and the wordsmithing is first rate.