Bite, spray and sing
Bill Oddie does some experimenting with hairy-eyeballed wood ants.
Never let it be said that Bill Oddie is not prepared to suffer in order to bring you, the British public, the very best of British wildlife. He shall now, with no protection whatsoever, plunge his bare hands into the lair of what is undoubtedly the most vicious predator in the forest. Actually, it just kind of tickles. It鈥檚 like having pins and needles. These are hairy wood ants and they have hairy eyeballs. They are nipping Bill to protect their home. It is south facing because they like the warmth - they like the sun in the morning, gets them going. It has built-in central heating and air conditioning because it鈥檚 lovely and warm in there, but you can see there are little holes here and there, and these are literally the doors and the windows. You see ants going in and out. You might get up to half a million inside an ant hill like this. The ants can also squirting lethal liquid from their abdomens - formic acid - which Bill demonstrates with some litmus paper. Do they make any noise? Bill borrows a microphine from the sound man, Chris Watson. So, for the first time on British television - the sound of ants.
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