The Volatile Delectation of the Exploding Ant

A recent expedition, by the Natural History Museum of Vienna, Technical University of Vienna, and other contributing institutions, has discovered a new species of ant in Borneo. Normally, that news would have all the impact of three-minute disposable catheter commercial; but, these ants are special. They explode.

Colobopsis explodens, when defending themselves or perhaps just having a bad day, latch onto their enemy and then burst explosively, covering their foes with a toxic goo that causes them to aggressively reevaluate their life choices. Not all of them explode, however… only the sterile females; human sterile females, by contrast, just buy a lot of cats…

This may not need to be said, but there’s no coming back from exploding yourself. You are fully committed. Bees kill themselves for the benefit of the greater good, as well. You don’t see that kind of dedication in, say, a moose or rabbit. I say, good for the exploding ants and well done!

But, do OTHER animals explode? Ants, Scanners and terrorists cannot be the only ones to blow up, right?

Seagulls: We all know that trick with making a seagull explode. All it takes is an Alka Seltzer, a piece of bread and a complete lack of empathy…

Dogs: Some canines were trained by the Soviet army during WWII to crawl under German tanks with bombs strapped to their bodies. You might think it was a mean trick to play on them, but I think the dogs HAD to have known something was up. Anyway, it turned out that dogs could not tell the difference between German and Russian tanks, so, when the fighting started, they just crawled under the first tank that they could find… destroying many a Soviet tank. This proves that sometimes heartless pragmatism takes a ninety degree turn and becomes poetic justice.

Cows: Cows make methane… a LOT of methane. It’s their fault for being herbivores. We sometimes create gas in our stomachs; but, cows have four stomachs to create gas in. And, if you put ninety farting cud-chewing cows into one building, as happened in Rasdorf, Germany, and one of those cows is a smoker, you get an explosion that blows the roof right off the barn.

Whales: Whales build up some nasty gasses after they die. If one is beached, it might explode when the carcass can no longer contain the gasses. Sometimes people blow the carcasses up with dynamite if the whale doesn’t explode fast enough to suit them. The most famous whale explosion occurred in Taiwan, when a carcass, being transported for study, explosively ruptured in the middle of a crowded square, splattering people with pulpy entrails like some kind of fish-based Gallagher performance.

Rats: Another WW2 creation. This time Great Britain’s Special Operations had come up with a plan to put plastic explosives into the corpses of dead rats, so that when they were thrown into a German ship’s boiler fire, they would explode, theoretically destroying the boiler and any chance of giving the rat a proper Christian burial. The plan was nixed when the Germans found out and instituted a policy where no rats would be burned if it didn’t have the proper papers.

Toads: Usually, when an animal explodes, the only mystery is who has to clean it up; however, when a thousand toads exploded around a pond in Hamburg, Germany, authorities were baffled. Actually, everyone was baffled, but authorities were the first ones to create a legal document attesting to their baffled state. The mystery was soon solved, however, and the culprit was… crows. Crows had determined, either through trial and error or maybe they’d gotten a hold of a biology book, somewhere, where the toads’ livers resided. They’d swoop and tear out the liver so quickly, the toad would only inflate himself AFTER the impromptu surgery and, with the diaphragm perforated, would explode across several square meters. German’s actually have laws protecting toads and, I don’t want to speak before all the facts are in, but it looks as if those crows were in violation of German law…

Hogs: In northern Iowa, a slurry of hog fecal foam caused a methane explosion that took the lives of 1500 pigs. If that explosion had never occurred, those pigs would still be around today… in the form of sausage and deli meats. It’s still too early to tell if that horrible event will hurt the popularity of pig crap.

Sharks: From 1958 to 1971, the US Navy was developing a method for using electric shocks to steer explosives-laden sharks to enemy ships. Nothing came of it because, as everyone now knows, YOU CAN’T STEER A SHARK. They worked on the project for thirteen years because, if you are stupid enough to come up with the original idea, you are far too stupid to understand when to cut your losses and quit. I’m not sure that it’s a sad thing when a man spends half of his career trying to tell a shark what to do, and fails; but, it’s definitely what a sad thing looks like…

So, other animals DO explode… some on their own and others with a lot of help. Some even explode posthumously. Colobopsis explodens is not special in that regard. The fact that it INTENTIONALLY explodes does make it stand out… for now. We have many species to discover and some may also be capable of exploding. And, if no other animals are found that can explode on their own, I’m sure that some country’s military will find a way to help them out…