Meat ant some are inquilines and live in the nest commensally. Unused or abandoned areas inside colonies are sometimes occupied by other species of ants and in some cases, termites. Meat ants may deliberately destroy the colonies of the termite "Amitermes laurensis" if competition between the two intensify. Meat ants play an important role in seed dispersal. A meat ant colony is capable of dispersing 334,000 individual bellyache bush seeds per hectare, which shows a strong ant-seed relationship among the two. Meat ants are able to kill poisonous cane toads, an introduced pest, as the toxins exuded by toad, that usually kill
The Ant and the Grasshopper Dan" (1963), makes an argument for poetry over fanatical hard work. Ciardi's ant, John J. Plenty, is so bent upon saving that he eats very little of what he has saved. Meanwhile, Fiddler Dan the grasshopper and his non-conforming ant wife survive the winter without help and resume playing music with the return of spring. John Updike's 1987 short story "Brother Grasshopper" deals with a pair of brothers-in-law whose lives parallel the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. One, Fred Barrow, lives a conservative, restrained existence; the other, Carlyle Lothrop, spends his money profligately, especially on joint vacations for