When: Monday, December 7th 7-9 PM
What: Ants: The Invisible Majority
Where: Atlas Cafe,
3049 20th St @ Alabama St. in the Mission District
Who: Dr. Brian Fisher, Biologist, Entomoligist, California Academy of Sciences
The Deets:
Ants may be tiny, but they play a huge role in their ecosystems. In fact, biologists estimate that the collective weight of all the ants on Earth is equal to the weight of all humans.

In this talk, Dr. Brian Fisher describes the unique behaviors and incredible adaptations of our planet’s most charismatic small animals. See how ants farm, hunt and tend “herds of livestock”. Learn how primitive Dracula ants feed on their sisters’ blood.

Watch the fastest recorded movement of any animal — a feisty ant with lightening-quick jaws that Dr. Fisher filmed with one of the world’s most advanced high-speed cameras. You’ll also learn about Dr. Fisher’s conservation efforts in Madagascar and gain new respect for our smallest neighbors.

We’ll also have a special performance this night by Genine Lentine. She’ll be reading ant-inspired poems and introducing LovePicnic – a humorous look at ants through the online dating world.

About Brian Fisher:
There are few modern-day naturalists who dodge bullets and rub elbows with billionaires and sheiks all in a day’s work. Biologist Dr. Brian Fisher is a 21st century explorer who treks through the last remote rainforests, deserts and plains of Madagascar in search of ants. His research highlights insects as a useful tool to discover and preserve all plants and animals on this unique island and beyond. Along the way, he has discovered over 800 new species and helped to introduce modern technology and techniques to the centuries-old disciplines of specimen collection and taxonomy. Dr. Fisher has been featured in a number of BBC, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic films and profiled in Newsweek and Discover magazines.

About Genine:
Genine Lentine’s chapbook Mr. Worthington’s Beautiful Experiments on Splashes is forthcoming from Diagram/New Michigan Press. Her poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, American Speech, Diagram, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Tricycle. The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden, her collaboration with Stanley Kunitz and photographer, Marnie Crawford Samuelson was published by W.W. Norton in 2005. Ongoing projects include Listening Booth, Spacewalks and The Heinous Task Table, all of which took shape in a 2009 Project Space residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. She is the Artist-in-Residence at the San Francisco Zen Center for 2009-10.