It’s a green and pleasant land, at this time of year here in England. I was taking the dog out on a belated walk in a shower-sun-shower scenario, when I clocked the foxgloves out in the forests and meadows.
I meandered dreamily past the tall nodding pink entities, coming to a screeching halt as I espied something ugly and black towards the top of one of the flower stems.
Bravely I moved in to investigate. Could it be a hairy caterpillar? Perhaps, I speculated briefly, it was a moth in repose.
But when I drew nearer, the grim truth dawned on me. I was watching carnage in microcosm.
Parked in neat rows, just as if they had left their cars and trooped obediently into Wembley for an Aphids R Us concert, were about 100 small, black aphid-like creatures. They might even have been black aphids.
Unsuspecting, they had laid out a settlement there on the tasty foxglove. They had got their microscopic feet under the table, and I am surmising that they were dining out in style.
It was a tiny community on a level of life I rarely get to see.
But there was, I am afraid, a fly in that particular jar of ointment.
For other visitors had already arrived, and things were not looking purdy. Two red ants had already scaled the towering perennial and were beginning, without sentiment, to dine on the tiny sub-creatures.
I had a horrified feeling they were eating them alive, and that, had I a stethoscope of industrial proportions, I might hear the little aphids crying their last.
You would think, wouldn’t you, that the others would make themselves scarce pretty damn quick? If my best friend had just been devoured by a giant insect with little visible capacity for compassion, I would be up on my little aphid legs as fast as they would carry me, and off to find another ant-free foxglove where I could live out my allotted minutes in peace.
But they were all just sitting there. It was almost as if moving was too much like hard work; “We’ve only got a few minutes of life anyway, guys; maybe best to call it a day and surrender to Mr Scarlet and Charming over there.”
I would like to portray the ants as animated by the joy of having found their next meal: but they had that automaton aura which so often accompanies seasoned killers.
Life was either too comfortable for the aphid clan, or possibly it was just too pointless.
Comfort can play a part in all sorts of deeply uncomfortable places.
Take volcanoes. These have their good points, says volcano researcher Dannie Hidayat.
He grew up within 50 miles of an active volcano. And around the turn of the millennia he began to research early warning systems for those who live within the danger zone of another.
Nearly one million people live within 20 miles of Merapi, an active volcano in Indonesia. Why? because the benefits are considerable. The heat generated can produce electricity; the sulphur can be used in matches, the gravels can be used for building and the farmers get the soil- and the crops- of their dreams.
There’s money to be made from that thar slightly volatile hill.
But living there is a calculated risk. Early warning systems are of the essence. And while seismology customarily detects the tremors of a quake, it seems volcanoes have an activity all their own.
Dannie and his team installed monitors on the side of the volcano: and they detected rumbles, not miles below the surface, but within the dome of the volcano, twenty metres south of the north crater wall.
What they had detected, to cut a long story short, was the existence of shallow magma, bubbling beneath the surface.
That was twelve years ago. Now Dannie works as a senior research fellow for the Earth Observatory of Singapore. But he’s still studying the same thing: how to get the early warning to that one million.
Many of us live On The Edge in one way or another, choosing to be oblivious of possibilities too drastic to take any notice of.
On the coast of Kent lies a stretch of inhospitable shingle of wild beauty which is an acquired taste. I’ve written about it before: Film director Derek Jarman lived there and tended a beautiful garden.
It has one huge facet which you either love or hate: the two nuclear power stations, one unused, one operational.
Idly, after discovering this place, I flipped through the property pages. Dungeness is peppered with shack-like dwellings with beatnikmobiles sat outside. As you pass open windows you might see a telescope pointed out at a scape which must, at night-time, be arresting.
It appears these little shacks are humble in outside appearance only: they go for anything upwards of £200,000 – considerably more than the conventional brick-built structures down the road.
The beauty; the end-of-the-world isolation; these seem to be enough to balance the calculated risk of living next to nuclear reaction.
All those statistics about the disadvantages of living next to a nuclear power station seem to pale into significance next to the vast sense of place out there on a wild coast.
Risk, and the choice to ignore it for the rewards: it’s part of being human.
Kate Shrewsday 
Fascinating look at the microscopic life of aphids and ants . . . and the parallels with the risks we voluntarily assume in life.
If I had to choose between having a Volcano or a Nuclear Reactor as a neighbor . . . I might choose the volcano.
That requires an evaluation process I’m not sure I’m going to venture into, Nancy 😀
I still feel sorry for the aphids every time I think about them…
Forget early warning system, dog will do just fine. If she is “off” you’d best watch out, the ground is a rumbling some where.
OF course, Dog! Simple, cheap and ingenious! Must let Dannie know the dog could save him some serious cash 😀
Funny, I just watched a 1950’s science fiction thriller, “Them”, about atomic ants that have set up huge nests and penetrated the tunnels of the southwest, killing people and creating terror. In 2011 it looked pretty silly, but, must have been pretty scary in 1956 – still a bit suspenseful, the aftermath of atomic testing in the ’40s. And here is your post and your ending words – Risk, and the choice to ignore it for the rewards: it’s part of being human.
The first thing I thought about when I saw the ants was those classic fifties movies, Penny 😀 I must go and YouTube a few of them…
i live in one of the world’s dangerous cities. but it’s home and has more trees than any other city
Home is where the heart is 🙂
mmm … If I had to choose, it would be the volcano, but I’d prefer Kent. (I have just written my post and mentioned aphids!)
Aphids are contagious, as any rose tree worth its salt will tell you…best warn everyone who comes to see you to bring bug spray or they’ll be all over the blogosphere like a rash!
I do enjoy your posts, they nearly always lead in such unexpected directions. You have a real gift for writing like this, informed, amusing, interesting, well-paced, well written and well argumented.
Thank you 🙂 The feeling is mutual: I loved the airport post…so evocative. And I think you may have coined a new term…
I love your anthropomorphic account of the aphids and ant attack.
Dungeness is an amazing place: we once spent a New Year’s day there, mainly in the pub, then strolling around those beach style buildings, admiring the distinctive style of gardening.
It’s worth a revisit now you have that camera… one of the world’s idiosyncratic corners.
Fascinating program on the radio a few days ago about a film maker who made microscopic filming so popular – all about a Balancing Blue Bottle, including stuff on cheese mites…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jz7cc/The_Balancing_Bluebottle/
Tilly, don’t listen to it!
Also I think they may have been milking them:
Oh, that is PRICELESS! One option I never even considered, Pseu, thanks 😀
this one shows it even more betterly as someone I know used to say!
Love the accompanying music. How amazing. Not on the edge of disaster, just a cash crop 🙂
I promise this is the last on this topic, but Wiki has this to say
Ant mutualism
Ant tending aphids
Ant extracting honeydew from an aphid
Some species of ants “farm” aphids, protecting them on the plants they eat, eating the honeydew that the aphids release from the terminations of their alimentary canals. This is a “mutualistic relationship”.
These “dairying ants” “milk” the aphids by stroking them with their antennae.[Note 1][21]
Some farming ant species gather and store the aphid eggs in their nests over the winter. In the spring, the ants carry the newly hatched aphids back to the plants. Some species of dairying ants (such as the European yellow meadow ant, Lasius flavus)[22] manage large “herds” of aphids that feed on roots of plants in the ant colony. Queens that are leaving to start a new colony take an aphid egg to found a new herd of underground aphids in the new colony. These farming ants protect the aphids by fighting off aphid predators.[21]
An interesting variation in ant-aphid relationships involves lycaenid butterflies and Myrmica ants. For example, Niphanda fusca butterflies lay eggs on plants where ants tend herds of aphids. The eggs hatch as caterpillars which feed on the aphids. The ants do not defend the aphids from the caterpillars but carry the caterpillars to their nest. In the nest, the ants feed the caterpillars, which produce honeydew for the ants. When the caterpillars reach full size, they crawl to the colony entrance and form cocoons. After two weeks, butterflies emerge and take flight.[23]:78–79
Some bees in coniferous forests also collect aphid honeydew to make “forest honey”.[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid
Right, I’ll get my coat, now
I’m going back tomorrow to say sorry. Can ants sue for defamation?
Cheers Pseu!
I don’t ant-ic-i-pate any problems on that front 🙂
LOL!
Insects, and in particular, mobbing insects, give me the heebie-jeebies, so I couldn’t read this. Sorry.
I’m just relieved there were no photos!
No problem, Tilly. Must remember to send an insect warning your way if I write about them from now on….
I knew someone once whose work entailed the use of an electronmicroscope. I knew right away that I would hate to look through this at slides, bloodwork, etc. where creepy crawlies emerge from nowhere!
The tiny world is fairy hair raising, isn’t it, Adeeyoyo?
you’ve outlined the age-old dilemma in most things. The moment vs. the consequences. The risk vs. the reward. It will turn out perfectly for some and not so well for others. So perhaps we need a simple paradigm shift about what “not so well” means?
Very good question, Tammy. If you have the answer to that one, you can calculate the risk for those most vulnerable. ‘Not so well’ could translate in some instances as catastrophic.
You even have time for the smallest detail.
“it’s part of being human” – that’s the essence, Kate – as well as our natural tendency towards complacency when things are going well
Ah, BB, you’ll get me waxing lyrical about Daniel Goleman’s ‘Vital Lies, Simple Truths’ if you’re not careful….our ability to deceive ourselves is often a survival tactic…