Forest Fruit Green Ant.

Some of my core philosophies regarding food are: Fresh is best. Go for locally grown. Eat in season.

While hollidaying in north Queensland I was very fortunate to stay on a property that was allmost bursting at the seames this tropical fruit. Right out side the frount door of the guest house were coconut palms and banana trees. Within site were pawpaw, mango, avocado, star fruit, pasion fruit, and custard apple. Then there were the real exotics with names like lemmonades, (tasted like lemmonade) and chocolate pudding, (tasted like chocolate pudding). Ofcourse there were so many others that I wont mention here, except to say that each one looked and tasted more amazeing than anything I have tasted before.

The garden of Eden.

In the morning I would leave the house and wander through out the grounds plucking and sampleing fruit at leasure. After haveing eatin my fill I would return to the house with a choice selection of the ripest most suculent fruit for my family to breakfast on. A real paradice.

Liveing within the fruit trees were a speices of ant known to the locals as 'Green Ant'. They make there football size nests out of the living leaves by binding them together with a silk like thread. I'm told there a type of bush tucker/ medicine. I beleive it's because of their extreamly high asorbic acid (vitamin C) content. A good remedy for colds and flu, would protect against scurvy aswell.

Green ants are the most agressive arachnid I have ever seen. There strategy when thretened is to swarm the enemy, where they inflict a painful bite with there massave and powerful jaws. They use chemical signals to great effect. When a food source is detected the message is sent back to the nest with amazing speed. Within moments it seames the whole nest has arived to consume the avalible food. At the food source consentric rings of guards are posted, heads and anteni held high looking for and sign of danger. Scurrying between thr guards are messenger ants sending and receveing chemical masseges from the guards and workers. Further out from the rings of guards are the scouts. The job of a scout is to rush back to the guards at the first sign of danger, the threat message is passed along the line, and the hyper agressive guards swarm the area where the threat was detected. Meanwhile the workers make short work of the food, ferrying it back to the nest flanked the entire time by squads of guards and reconnecence scouts. The rest of the time groups of five or six prospecter ants spred out looking for more food.