The Antics of Ant An Antology

“I didn’t ant-icipate (forgive me!) the style of The Antics of Ant, but I enjoyed the drawings,” says biologist, naturalist, and author E. O. Wilson.

This collection of funny, clever, and sometimes dry cartoons remained a secret, hidden between pages of academic and scientific documents, for nearly five decades. Jane Margaret Bowles was a biologist and ecologist with a lifelong passion for poetry, humor, and sketching plants and animals. After her death, these four sets of ant drawings were discovered—one of which appeared on the reverse side of a typewritten plant physiology essay. Other clues date the illustrations to the mid-1970s, and no one is sure if Bowles showed even one of them to another living soul.

Today, they are yours to enjoy. See the world in a new and enchanting way and discover the small, delightful surprises hiding within each page as you follow this parade of seemingly infinite wordplay and visual manifestations of the ant body…orantatomy.