No pharmaceuticals talk here this morning. Time to spend a moment with a different kind of industry instead: the very busy leaf-cutter ants of Costa Rica.
Several months ago, I wrote an article for the Scientific American guest blog about artist Catherine Chalmers and her work with these incredible insects.
Chalmers will be screening excerpts of the video portion of her leaf-cutter ants project at the upcoming Imagine Science Films film festival (taking place October 14-21 at the Bell House in Brooklyn, for any New Yorkers out there who might be interested to know).
In preparation for the event, Chalmers is previewing clips online. The video is worth a look just for the stunning colors of the flower petals alone. And, the ants are pretty impressive, too.
Here it is, for your Friday morning enjoyment. Chalmers has plenty more on her Vimeo page.
The Chosen from Catherine Chalmers on Vimeo.
The and now for something completely different by Jessica Wapner, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
Jessica Wapner is a freelance writer focused mainly on biomedical issues. Her work is published in Scientific American, The New York Times, Slate, Science, Nature Medicine, and elsewhere. Her first book, The Philadelphia Chromosome is forthcoming from The Experiment in May 2013.