Los Angeles: This summer, at your local multiplex, Paul Rudd is “Ant-Man,” the size-shifting superhero capable of shrinking down to itsy-bitsy proportions and communicating with insects, in the Marvel action movie that opens across the UAE on Thursday.
But Rudd, a star of comedies like Role Models and Knocked Up, is an ant man in another serious way. In preparation for Ant-Man, whose script he helped write (with Adam McKay, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish), he studied ants thoroughly — by show-business standards — and came to appreciate all the little details he learnt about the creepy-crawly insects.
“What you want to do when you’re shooting this movie is feel a connection with the ants,” Rudd said in an interview. “You want to understand them a little bit.”
“I started reading up on them, more and more,” he added. “They’re so advanced in ways of survival, and all the ways that so many types of ants are different from each other are just fascinating. And also: so weird.”
In these excerpts from that conversation, Rudd (who is not a licensed myrmecologist) draws from his Ant-Man studies, his recollections and the occasional assistance of the internet to talk about some of his favourite members of the Formicidae family.
Trap-Jaw Ant
“This was one that I found particularly intriguing in my research. They’re so specialised, and they have such good defence mechanisms that if there are a bunch of them around and they feel threatened, they will start bouncing around using their jaws, in an effect that almost looks like popcorn, and it confuses the attacker. It’s terrifying. And an ant can place his jaw on the ground, open it and use the force to spring up and out of any kind of dangerous situation — like up to three inches [eight centimetres]. And that is the equivalent of somebody who is 5-foot-6 [1.67 metres] leaping 44 feet [13 metres]. That might be Jon Stewart’s size. A trap-jaw ant putting his head to the ground and leaping back is the equivalent of Jon Stewart leaping 44 feet [13 metres] into the air. I’ve always liked those kinds of palpable, easy-to-digest comparisons.”
Turtle Ant
“There’s a kind of lichen on trees that the turtle ants — or door head ants — are drawn to, and the lichen makes the tree white, and it’s easy for them to see. But they have such an aerodynamic quality to their bodies that if they jump or fall and, even at the last minute, realise it’s just sunlight hitting a leaf or something, they can shift their bodies and do a 180 in mid-air. There’s a kind of beetle that bores into a tree, and once it leaves, the ants take over the tunnels. These ants clog up the hole that the beetle bores, like a cork — just one guy using his head while the rest of the colony lives in the tree. They’re the most selfless creatures I’ve ever come across. Their job is, ‘I’m going to stick my head in a hole and protect the rest of the gang.’ I love my children more than anything on earth. But if I had to stick my head in the front door of my apartment 24 hours a day to keep people out, I don’t know if I could hack it. That would get old.”
Bullet Ant
“There’s a thing called the Schmidt Pain Index, and the bullet ant ranks as No. 1. The bites of the bullet ant are registered, by this system, as being the most painful thing in existence that you can survive. There’s a tribe that has this ritual, where you have to put your hands in these gloves that are filled with bullet ants. They will bite you, and it’s one of those rituals where a boy then becomes a man. Like the most painful bar mitzvah anybody’s had. It’s a thousand times worse than getting in a pinstripe suit and being stabbed with fountain pens. I have a pretty high threshold for pain. I remember as a kid, I would complain to my mom that I had a pain in my ear. She would say, ‘How long have you had it?’ I would say, ‘I don’t know — I guess maybe a month?’ And I would go to the doctor only to find out I have a massive ear infection, and he doesn’t know how I’ve even been able to walk. But watching this, there’s no way that I would ever attempt this.”
Dracula Ant
“They’re not cannibals, but they’re kind of the closest thing, where they will suck the blood of their larvae. They don’t kill them, but that’s how they get their nourishment. You think, this is nature at its most disgusting and most fascinating. And they were discovered really not that long ago. The first genus of the Dracula ant was identified in Madagascar in ‘93. It’s the opposite of those boring people at Nasa, who are naming stars with numbers and letters. I think the scientists who are discovering ants, they understand panache and style in a much cooler way. There’s no new ant that’s being named PT-396. They’re naming them Dracula ants. You know what you’re getting with these ants.”
Weaver Ant
“The weaver ants, they’re in trees, where they make nests by weaving leaves together with larval silk. And the colonies can be really, really big. It seems like, Oh, wow, this is a less disgusting thing than sucking the blood of your babies. ‘Why don’t we just use the silk and make a home for ourselves?’ You want to hang with these guys.”
