mike.. i find the balloon letting go far too human an activity... in fact it sickens me with sentimentality..to see humans do this makes me ill... so if ants did this they would be copying humans.. i'd prefer the human to copy the ants... balloons and white doves...all over the top... i prefer the vulture as in Tibetan practises.... when i bali in 1974..i witnessed a balinese funeral..you could smell the body being "barbecued" in the open... then the bones are later buried..after 6 months they dig em up...i saw that too... strange are humans...so much more stranger than animals..who just drink eat and sleep according to their nature... we humans have deviated from our true nature which i believe ZEN makes the point of alerting us to... back to the beginning back to our origins... back back back on all fours.. merle
Merle, Ants going to a chapel to release little white balloons as a metaphor for 'letting go' of their dead not absurd enough for you??? ; ) Mike Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad ________________________________ From: Merle Lester <[email protected]>; To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Subject: Re: [Zen] dead ants - dead Zen! Sent: Mon, Jun 24, 2013 4:29:16 AM mike..yes i do..however it is of a very rare type..and those who do understand my humour are always those folk with a very acute sense of the absurd..merle Merle, Sorry. I forgot you don't get humour. Mike Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad ________________________________ From: Merle Lester <[email protected]>; To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Subject: Re: [Zen] dead ants - dead Zen! Sent: Mon, Jun 24, 2013 12:15:00 AM mike...did you read edgar's post on ants????????? what are you driving at with your balloon theory? merle Merle, I hate to be the one to tell you, but ants don't carry their dead to little ant chapels to release little white ant-balloons to 'let go' of their dead.. Sorry to pop your balloon. ; ) Mike Sent from Yahoo! Mail for iPad ________________________________ From: Merle Lester <[email protected]>; To: [email protected] <[email protected]>; Subject: Re: [Zen] dead ants - dead Zen! Sent: Sun, Jun 23, 2013 10:49:29 PM yes edgar.. as i was saying to mike...ants carry their dead... i remember as child of 7 watching ants and their behaviour... and noticing they carry their dead thank you for the clarification edgar ..now mike.... see how beautifully ants organise their lives.. can you say that for humans? merle Most ant species, particularly the ones we are most exposed to, do not practice cannibalism - so no, they do not eat their dead like some others here have suggested. Instead, similar to the way humans bury their dead away from towns, they dispose of them in small piles in specific locations. These may be either inside of their nest in a special chamber that is far enough from most other chambers so as not to contaminate the nest with a bacterial infection, or a location outside of the nest. Those outdoor collections of dead ants are called "midden piles". They are the dead ants and other "waste material" that have been removed from the main colony during nest maintenance. Ants keep a fairly clean house. They carry their waste matter outside of their nest and dispose of it, like mentioned earlier, in piles called "midden"s. As well as being a kind of dumpster, the midden also functions as a cemetery. Ants transport their dead there in order to protect themselves, their larvae and their queen from bacterial and fungal contamination. You may have also noticed that the more lone ants you step on and kill in your home, the more new ants will be moving in. That's because when an ant dies, its body releases a chemical called oleic acid. Oleic acid translates to "dumpster material" for ants. So even if you flushed those casualties down the toilet, the oleic acid had already been released; and other ants would still show up to respond to the initial call of distress to pick up their dead family members - the very ants you stepped on or flushed. Source(s): http://amos.indiana.edu/library/scripts/… Edgar
