This morning’s ink and watercolor sketch was an ant model, drawn while we chatted about the tiny empire under our feet.
Sketch & Coffee, Live! is streamed daily at 5:30am, Texas Time, at the YouTubes
I opened with a true story about stepping in a hidden ant bed and spending part of my workday doing the ants‑in‑my‑pants dance. Ants are good for the planet, just not in my pants.
We hit the big picture. Arthropods have been around about 500 million years, and ants branched from wasp‑like ancestors roughly 120 million years ago. With landmasses still close together, they spread nearly everywhere except Antarctica. Ants fill the recycling jobs in nature, moving leaf litter and the leftovers of life back into the system.
There are about 15,700 scientifically described species, maybe twenty thousand total. Documentaries love army ants that swarm without permanent nests, using their own bodies as living walls and blankets. We touched on a giant ant from the deep past at roughly two inches long, and on modern giants in South America that you would definitely notice if they were in your clothes. We laughed about local fire ants too, the little black ones in Texas that sting like crazy.
Click here to watch the Ant episode of Sketch & Coffee, Live!
Also, if you, or a teacher friend of yours, could use a 20-30 minute lesson plan about ants, here is a lesson plan free for download:
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