By Steve Jurvetson from Menlo Park, USA (Flickr: Miners) [CC-BY-2.0 ()], via WC

Here’s something we don’t consider much when talking about the dangers of pesticides: What about the people who use insects as a food source?

It tastes like mint.

In the town of Silveiras, Brazil, the frying and eating of queen ants dates back centuries, but pesticides used by the booming paper industry are now threatening the insects.

Brazilian Tradition of Eating Ants

Of course, the video above showed Brazilians eating ants while the picture above actually shows ants eating…or something.

Description: “These are harvester ants with powerful jaws. In a strange coincidence, a harvester ant colony has a comparable number of neurons as a human brain. There are about 1.6 million ants for every person on earth.

The ants you see crawling around are all female. This gel farm was developed by NASA to survive Space Shuttle launches (sand would shift and crush the ants under many G’s). They wanted to study tunnel formation in microgravity. The gel does not collapse during launch, and it contains all the food and water the ants need. It also has some antibiotics and anti-fungal agents.”