Finland
rightly has a reputation for great northern scenery and nature, including some abundant
wildlife.
Most
people from the temperate world – if they ever have cause to think about it at
all – probably imagine Finland to be a land of moose, bears, and reindeer. They
might also think of swans and other waterfowl. All of that is true, of course. If
forced to consider insects, some people might recall hearing rumors that here be
monster mosquitoes. Very true, indeed.
However,
there is one very prominent form of six-legged wildlife that most people
(myself included, before I came here) would never have associated with this Nordic
landscape.
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| A Finnish anthill, somewhere in Savo. |
Ants
are everywhere in Finland. That’s no great surprise, since there is no place on
earth without ants. (Well, except Antarctica, ironic when you consider that
continent’s name. It's the “arctica” of ants, isn't it?)
What
is surprising in the case of Finland is how conspicuous ants are. In subtropical
Georgia, you of course see ants scurrying over the ground almost anywhere you
want to look. But you don’t normally pay attention to their homes, usually just
marked by a sprinkling of dirt surrounding a tiny hole in the ground. They are
easy to overlook, at least in North Georgia. In Finland, that is not a problem.
Ant
nests are huge here. They can easily be a meter (three feet) tall, rising out
of the green forest floor like a brown pyramid covered in thousands of
energetic worker ants.
The
sheer size of Finnish ant colonies, teeming with hundreds of thousands of the
little buggers, means its best to give them a wide berth. Except that some Finns – living
up to a certain national character that can only be described as quirky (some
might say masochistic) – make a point of doing just the opposite.
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| Leaf-cutting ants. Not found in Finland. |
Among
one of the strangest of strange Finnish “sports” (and there are some strange
ones), “anthill sitting” is one whose appeal is probably lost on anyone who is
not a Finn (and, to be honest, most Finns as well).
The
goal of this contest is to see who can sit the longest on top of an angry nest
of ants. Oh, yes, and to give the ants a sporting chance (they are, after all,
pretty small), the human contestants do this in the buff. I think alcohol is often
involved. I know that would have to be the case for me to take part.
Needless
to say, there are better ways to appreciate ants. I once worked for a botanist
at the University of Georgia who studied leaf-cutting ants in South America. These
ants are famous for snipping off bits of leaves, which they carry back to their
nests to use as fertilizer for their actual foodstuff, fungus. It is basically
a kind of farming.
I
always hoped my boss would need me to join one of his expeditions to the Amazon,
but it never happened. I did eventually get to see leafcutters in action,
however, when my four-year-old son and I visited the Parque Natural Metropolitano, a patch of tropical forest in Panama
City, Panama.
On
a Finland-related note: the Parque Metropolitano is used as a study site by the nearby US Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute, which employs a large construction crane to access the 30-meter-high
(90-foot) forest canopy. The crane was, I believe, provided by a well-known
Finnish machine company and paid for, in part, by the Finnish government. A
surprising reminder of Suomi in the jungle.
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| Young explorer in Panama. |
There,
under that tropical canopy, I experienced maybe my only true David Attenborough
moment when we happened upon a trail of leaf cutting ants marching in a
straight line over the forest floor. As we followed this tiny procession of hundreds
of ants, each one holding a slice of green leaf, the line joined with another line
of ants, coming from a different direction and all carrying, instead of leaves,
some sort of red berries. The converged lines of leaf- and berry-carriers continued
together, moving relentlessly toward their distant nest. It’s one of the
coolest things I’ve ever seen in the woods.
Still,
as we watched this miniature parade, it somehow didn’t occur to me to follow
them to their nest and sit on it. Guess I’m not Finnish enough.
