Flashback Friday: Ant Butts

I went to Australia in 2007 on a high school trip (even though I wasn’t in high school at the time). It was a whirlwind of a vacation primarily because I was jet lagged the entire time. The trip was two weeks long and we traveled to Sydney, Cairns, and the Whitsunday Islands. Since we were there in June, it was wintertime in Australia and many of the places we visited weren't busy with tourists, which was pretty nice.

We stayed at a resort right on the beach in the Whitsundays. There were no cars, stores or restaurants on the island (or if there were, we didn't know about them).  Because it was winter, we were basically the only people at the resort so we had total run of the place. During our stay it was pretty rainy, windy and chilly, which was unfortunate. The views were gorgeous though.  

Everyday there were activities such as jet skiing, hiking in the forest, and swimming. One day the resort was sponsoring a nature walk through the woods. The tour guide was funny and made tramping around in the rainforest pretty interesting. Australia has many of the most dangerous snakes, spiders and  animals in the world, and many of these creatures can kill you pretty quickly; there's just something about this that makes you a little nervous to explore in the rainforest, especially while on an island without motorized vehicles. 

During our hike the guide found a group of ants with large, green-colored butts. He picked one up and licked the butt and instructed all of us to do the same thing. The butt was really sour--like those Warhead candies sour. There were probably 25 of us just standing in the woods licking ant butts, a strange sight to see if anyone would have stumbled upon us suddenly. I don't remember why the ant butts were sour, and to this day I've wondered who actually realized that this particular kind of ant's behind has a tart flavor. And how? 

The quality of the photo is poor, but you get the idea.