2017-02-24 01:13 Ant Watching
Y (Kuma's owner)
I love science books and love to read scientists' biographies as well. Richard Feynman has written lots of books not only for physics, he wrote about his childhood and his daily life. I had read one of his books and there was a description about ants. He said he liked to watch ants moving and so I do.
I feel like I have become a giant and look down on a small town of ants. There are so many kinds of ants in Australia. Comparing Australian ants and Japanese ants, Australian ants are aggressive and I have been bitten by ants many times.
To me, the lawn in the yard is flat but to ants it must be a forest. In the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids", a scientist which was played by Rick Moranis invented a machine that can shrink everything, and there are scenes of ants walking under the lawn. As long as I have seen the movie, an ants' life seems not to be so easy. They are always busy as business people in New York or Tokyo. I haven't seen an ant that was taking a break, they are moving all the time.
One day when I was watching ants moving, and I found that they were running on a hose. Lots of ants were running on the hose. It looked like cars running on a motorway. Then I noticed that running on the hose is easier than running on the ground because there are no obstacles. Hoses are really the motorway for ants. I have never thought that they used a hose that way. We think that insects are not higher animals and not clever but they seem not to be so stupid as we think.
Yesterday, when I was feeding my cats, I saw a tiny flake of Katsuobushi was moving.
Maybe I should explain what Katsuobushi is, before starting this topic. Katsuobushi is dried flakes of smoked fish (skipjack tuna). It is very common in Japanese food. Usually, cats love it and that's because I sometime give it to my cats that don't have a good appetite.
Back to the topic, I gave some Katsuobushi flakes to one of my cats. I think he dropped a Katsuobushi flake onto the floor. A strange thing happened, a tiny Katsuobushi flake was walking! I moved my face close to the flake and made sure it was an ant carrying the flake. She was carrying a flake that was four or five times the size of her body. That state reminded me of a bearer who was carrying a flag in the opening ceremony of the Olympic games. I don't think people say "adorable" to insects but this time I thought she was adorable.
I don't expect people to understand my feelings, but I think that if Richard Feynman was still alive, he would.