The Ant Man Cometh: Pulitzer Prize-winning author Hoelldobler to speak, show film at Museum
For Immediate Release
November 9, 2006
Contact: Jon Pishney at (919) 733-7450, ext. 304
RALEIGH—Though they are tiny, their total collective mass on Earth rivals that of humans. On Monday, November 20, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences hosts sociobiologist Bert Hoelldobler, a Pulitzer prize-winning author and one of the leading authorities on our planet's most successful life form—ants. Join us at 7:00 p.m. for a showing of "Ants: Nature's Secret Power," an award-winning documentary film based on Hoelldobler's research. A question and answer session with Hoelldobler will follow.
"Ants: Nature's Secret Power" has won several major awards including the 2005 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival's Special Jury Prize. Awards from the Jackson Hole Film Festival are considered the "academy awards" of documentary wildlife films. This 55-minute film uses cutting-edge macro-cinematography to bring the viewer face-to-face with the mysterious world of ants—their nations, complexity, social dynamics, versatility and majesty.
Ants, together with their cousins the bees and wasps, were among the first organisms in evolution to develop true social behavior more than 100 million years ago. They are found in virtually every terrestrial environment (not to mention the kitchen), from the tundra to the rain forest to the desert, and on every continent except Antarctica. Hoelldobler estimates that their global population numbers are around 10 thousand trillion. In the life-rich Amazon, for example, they make up a third of the total animal biomass.
In addition to the film, Hoelldobler won a Pulitzer Prize (1990 general nonfiction) for his book, "The Ants," which he co-authored with Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson.
The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, in downtown Raleigh, documents and interprets the natural history of the state of North Carolina through exhibits, research, collections, publications, and educational programming. Hours: Mon.-Sat., 9 am to 5 pm, and Sun., noon to 5 pm. Admission is free. Visit the Museum on the Web at naturalsciences.org. The Museum is an agency of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, William G. Ross Jr., Secretary.
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