title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: In Madison, New Jersey, David, a prototype Mecha child capable of experiencing love, is given to Henry Swinton and his wife Monica, whose son Martin contracted a rare disease and has been placed in suspended animation. Monica initially feels uneasy with David, but eventually warms to him and activates his imprinting protocol, causing him to have an enduring, childlike love for her. David seeks to have Monica express the same love towards him, and also befriends Teddy, Martin's robotic teddy bear. Martin is unexpectedly cured of his disease and brought home. Martin becomes jealous of David and goads him to perform worrisome acts, such as cutting off the locks of Monica's hair while she is sleeping. At a pool party, one of Martin's friends pokes David with a knife, triggering his self-protection programming. David grabs onto Martin, and they both fall to the bottom of the pool, with David holding Martin tightly. Others jump in and save Martin before he drowns, and David is accused of being a danger to living people. Henry convinces Monica to return David to his creators to be destroyed, thinking that if David can love, he also can hate. On the way there, Monica has a change of heart and spares David from destruction by leaving him in the woods. With Teddy as his only companion, David recalls "The Adventures of Pinocchio" and decides to find the Blue Fairy so that she may turn him into a real boy, which he believes will win back Monica's love.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: David and Teddy are captured by a "Flesh Fair", a traveling circus-like event where obsolete Mecha are destroyed before jeering crowds who hate Mecha, believing them to be both dangerous and a cause of human unemployment. About to be destroyed himself, David pleads for his life, and the audience, deceived by David's realistic nature, revolts and allows David to escape alongside Gigolo Joe, a male prostitute Mecha on the run from authorities after being framed for murder. David, Teddy, and Joe go to the decadent resort town of Rouge City, where "Dr. Know", a holographic answer engine, directs them to the top of Rockefeller Center in the flooded ruins of Manhattan and also provides fairy tale information interpreted by David as suggesting that a Blue Fairy has the power to help him. Above the ruins of Manhattan, David meets Professor Hobby, his creator, who tells him that their meeting demonstrates David's ability to love and desire. David finds many copies of himself, including female variants called "Darlene", boxed and ready to be shipped. Disheartened by his lost sense of individuality, David attempts suicide by falling from a skyscraper into the ocean. While underwater, David catches sight of a figure resembling the Blue Fairy before Joe rescues him in an amphibious aircraft. Before David can explain, Joe is captured via electromagnet by authorities. David and Teddy take control of the aircraft to see the Blue Fairy, which turns out to be a statue from an attraction on Coney Island. The two become trapped when the Wonder Wheel falls on their vehicle. Believing the Blue Fairy to be real, David asks the statue to turn him into a real boy and repeats this request until his power source is depleted.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Two thousand years later, humanity has become extinct and Manhattan is now buried under glacial ice. The Mecha has evolved into an advanced form, and a group of them called the Specialists have become interested in learning about humanity. They find and revive David and Teddy. David walks to the frozen Blue Fairy statue, which collapses when he touches it. The Specialists reconstruct the Swinton family home from David's memories and explain to him, via an interactive image of the Blue Fairy, that it is impossible to make David a real boy. However, at David's insistence, they use their scientific knowledge to recreate Monica through genetic material from the strand of hair that Teddy kept. This Monica can live for only one day, and the process cannot be repeated. David spends his happiest day with Monica, and as she falls asleep in the evening, she tells David that she has always loved him: "the everlasting moment he had been waiting for", the narrator says; "David falls asleep as well and goes to that place 'where dreams are born.'"


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Kubrick began development on an adaptation of "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long" in the late 1970s, hiring the story's author, Brian Aldiss, to write a film treatment. In 1985, Kubrick asked Steven Spielberg to direct the film, with Kubrick producing. Warner Bros. agreed to co-finance "A.I." and cover distribution duties. The film labored in development hell, and Aldiss was fired by Kubrick over creative differences in 1989. Bob Shaw briefly served as writer, leaving after six weeks due to Kubrick's demanding work schedule, and Ian Watson was hired as the new writer in March 1990. Aldiss later remarked, "Not only did the bastard fire me, he hired my enemy [Watson] instead." Kubrick handed Watson "The Adventures of Pinocchio" for inspiration, calling "A.I." "a picaresque robot version of "Pinocchio"".


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Three weeks later, Watson gave Kubrick his first story treatment, and concluded his work on "A.I." in May 1991 with another treatment of 90 pages. Gigolo Joe was originally conceived as a G.I. Mecha, but Watson suggested changing him to a male prostitute. Kubrick joked, "I guess we lost the kiddie market." Meanwhile, Kubrick dropped "A.I." to work on a film adaptation of "Wartime Lies", feeling computer animation was not advanced enough to create the David character. After the release of Spielberg's "Jurassic Park", with its innovative computer-generated imagery, it was announced in November 1993 that production of "A.I." would begin in 1994. Dennis Muren and Ned Gorman, who worked on "Jurassic Park", became visual effects supervisors, but Kubrick was displeased with their previsualization, and with the expense of hiring Industrial Light & Magic.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: In early 1994, the film was in pre-production with Christopher "Fangorn" Baker as concept artist, and Sara Maitland assisting on the story, which gave it "a feminist fairy-tale focus". Maitland said that Kubrick never referred to the film as "A.I.", but as "Pinocchio". Chris Cunningham became the new visual effects supervisor. Some of his unproduced work for "A.I." can be seen on the DVD, "The Work of Director Chris Cunningham". Aside from considering computer animation, Kubrick also had Joseph Mazzello do a screen test for the lead role. Cunningham helped assemble a series of "little robot-type humans" for the David character. "We tried to construct a little boy with a movable rubber face to see whether we could make it look appealing," producer Jan Harlan reflected. "But it was a total failure, it looked awful." Hans Moravec was brought in as a technical consultant. Meanwhile, Kubrick and Harlan thought "A.I." would be closer to Steven Spielberg's sensibilities as director. Kubrick handed the position to Spielberg in 1995, but Spielberg chose to direct other projects, and convinced Kubrick to remain as director. The film was put on hold due to Kubrick's commitment to "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999).


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: After Kubrick's death in March 1999, Harlan and Christiane Kubrick approached Spielberg to take over the director's position. By November 1999, Spielberg was writing the screenplay based on Watson's 90-page story treatment. It was his first solo screenplay credit since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977). Spielberg remained close to Watson's treatment, but removed various sex scenes with Gigolo Joe. Pre-production was briefly halted during February 2000, because Spielberg pondered directing other projects, which were "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone", "Minority Report", and "Memoirs of a Geisha". The following month Spielberg announced that "A.I." would be his next project, with "Minority Report" as a follow-up. When he decided to fast track "A.I.", Spielberg brought Chris Baker back as concept artist. Ian Watson reported that the final script was very faithful to Kubrick's vision, even the ending, which is often attributed to Spielberg, saying, "The final 20 minutes are pretty close to what I wrote for Stanley, and what Stanley wanted, faithfully filmed by Spielberg without added schmaltz."


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: The original start date was July 10, 2000, but filming was delayed until August. Aside from a couple of weeks shooting on location in Oxbow Regional Park in Oregon, "A.I." was shot entirely using sound stages at Warner Bros. Studios and the Spruce Goose Dome in Long Beach, California.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Spielberg copied Kubrick's obsessively secretive approach to filmmaking by refusing to give the complete script to cast and crew, banning press from the set, and making actors sign confidentiality agreements. Social robotics expert Cynthia Breazeal served as technical consultant during production. Costume designer Bob Ringwood studied pedestrians on the Las Vegas Strip for his influence on the Rouge City extras. Additional visual effects such as removing the visible rods controlling Teddy and removing Haley Joel Osment's breath, were provided in-house by PDI/DreamWorks.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Julianne Moore and Gwyneth Paltrow were considered for the role of Monica Swinton before Frances O'Connor was cast and Jerry Seinfeld was originally considered to voice and play the Comedian Robot before Chris Rock was cast.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: The film's soundtrack was released by Warner Sunset Records in 2001. The original score was composed and conducted by John Williams and featured singers Lara Fabian on two songs and Josh Groban on one. The film's score also had a limited release as an official "For your consideration Academy Promo", as well as a complete score issue by La-La Land Records in 2015. The band Ministry appears in the film playing the song "What About Us?" but the song does not appear on the official soundtrack album.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Warner Bros. used an alternate reality game titled "The Beast" to promote the film. Over forty websites were created by Atomic Pictures in New York City (kept online at Cloudmakers.org) including the website for Cybertronics Corp. There were to be a series of video games for the Xbox video game console that followed the storyline of "The Beast", but they went undeveloped. To avoid audiences mistaking "A.I." for a family film, no action figures were created, although Hasbro released a talking Teddy following the film's release in June 2001.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" was released on VHS and DVD in the U.S. by DreamWorks Home Entertainment on March 5, 2002 in widescreen and full-screen 2-disc special editions featuring an extensive sixteen-part documentary detailing the film's development, production, music and visual effects. The bonus features also included interviews with Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Steven Spielberg, and John Williams, two teaser trailers for the film's original theatrical release and an extensive photo gallery featuring production stills and Stanley Kubrick's original storyboards. It was released overseas by Warner Home Video.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: The film was first released on Blu-ray in Japan by Warner Home Video on December 22, 2010, followed shortly after with a U.S release by Paramount Home Media Distribution (former owners of the DreamWorks catalog) on April 5, 2011. This Blu-ray featured the film newly remastered in high-definition and incorporated all the bonus features previously included on the 2-disc special-edition DVD. Warner Home Video currently owns the digital rights to the film worldwide. Because of the regional distribution, "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" can be streamed on Paramount+ in North America and HBO Max internationally.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: The film opened in 3,242 theaters in the United States and Canada on June 29, 2001, earning $29.35 million at #1 during its opening weekend. "A.I" went on to gross $78.62 million in the U.S. and Canada. Opening on 524 screens in Japan, "A.I." grossed almost 2 billion Yen in its first five days, the biggest June opening ever in Japan at the time, and sold more tickets in its opening weekend than "", although grossed slightly less. It went on to gross $78 million in Japan. It grossed $79 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $235.93 million.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" holds an approval rating of 75% based on reviews from 197 critics, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A curious, not always seamless, amalgamation of Kubrick's chilly bleakness and Spielberg's warm-hearted optimism. "A.I." is, in a word, fascinating." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100 based on reviews from 32 critics, which indicates "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Producer Jan Harlan stated that Kubrick "would have applauded" the final film, while Kubrick's widow Christiane also enjoyed "A.I". Brian Aldiss admired the film as well: "I thought what an inventive, intriguing, ingenious, involving film this was. There are flaws in it and I suppose I might have a personal quibble but it's so long since I wrote it." Of the film's ending, he wondered how it might have been had Kubrick directed the film: "That is one of the 'ifs' of film history—at least the ending indicates Spielberg adding some sugar to Kubrick's wine. The actual ending is overly sympathetic and moreover rather overtly engineered by a plot device that does not really bear credence. But it's a brilliant piece of film and of course it's a phenomenon because it contains the energies and talents of two brilliant filmmakers." Richard Corliss heavily praised Spielberg's direction, as well as the cast and visual effects.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of a possible four, saying that it is "wonderful and maddening". Ebert later gave the film a full four stars and added it to his "Great Movies" list in 2011. Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, gives the film two stars out of four in his "Movie Guide", writing: "[The] intriguing story draws us in, thanks in part to Osment's exceptional performance, but takes several wrong turns; ultimately, it just doesn't work. Spielberg rewrote the adaptation Stanley Kubrick commissioned of the Brian Aldiss short story 'Super Toys Last All Summer Long'; [the] result is a curious and uncomfortable hybrid of Kubrick and Spielberg sensibilities." However, he calls John Williams' music score "striking". Jonathan Rosenbaum compared "A.I." to "Solaris" (1972), and praised both "Kubrick for proposing that Spielberg direct the project and Spielberg for doing his utmost to respect Kubrick's intentions while making it a profoundly personal work." Film critic Armond White, of the "New York Press", praised the film noting that "each part of David's journey through carnal and sexual universes into the final eschatological devastation becomes as profoundly philosophical and contemplative as anything by cinema's most thoughtful, speculative artists – Borzage, Ozu, Demy, Tarkovsky." Filmmaker Billy Wilder hailed "A.I." as "the most underrated film of the past few years." When British filmmaker Ken Russell saw the film, he wept during the ending.


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Screenwriter Ian Watson has speculated, "Worldwide, "A.I." was very successful (and the 4th-highest earner of the year) but it didn't do quite so well in America, because the film, so I'm told, was too poetical and intellectual in general for American tastes. Plus, quite a few critics in America misunderstood the film, thinking for instance that the Giacometti-style beings in the final 20 minutes were aliens (whereas they were robots of the future who had evolved themselves from the robots in the earlier part of the film) and also thinking that the final 20 minutes were a sentimental addition by Spielberg, whereas those scenes were exactly what I wrote for Stanley and exactly what he wanted, filmed faithfully by Spielberg."


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Mick LaSalle gave a largely negative review. ""A.I." exhibits all its creators' bad traits and none of the good. So we end up with the structureless, meandering, slow-motion endlessness of Kubrick combined with the fuzzy, cuddly mindlessness of Spielberg." Dubbing it Spielberg's "first boring movie", LaSalle also believed the robots at the end of the film were aliens, and compared Gigolo Joe to the "useless" Jar Jar Binks, yet praised Robin Williams for his portrayal of a futuristic Albert Einstein. Peter Travers gave a mixed review, concluding "Spielberg cannot live up to Kubrick's darker side of the future.", but still put the film on his top ten list that year. David Denby in "The New Yorker" criticized "A.I." for not adhering closely to his concept of the Pinocchio character. Spielberg responded to some of the criticisms of the film, stating that many of the "so called sentimental" elements of "A.I.", including the ending, were in fact Kubrick's and the darker elements were his own. However, Sara Maitland, who worked on the project with Kubrick in the 1990s, claimed that one of the reasons Kubrick never started production on "A.I." was because he had a hard time making the ending work. James Berardinelli found the film "consistently involving, with moments of near-brilliance, but far from a masterpiece. In fact, as the long-awaited 'collaboration' of Kubrick and Spielberg, it ranks as something of a disappointment." Of the film's highly debated finale, he claimed, "There is no doubt that the concluding 30 minutes are all Spielberg; the outstanding question is where Kubrick's vision left off and Spielberg's began." John Simon of the "National Review" described A.I. "as an uneasy mix of trauma and treacle".


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: In 2002, Spielberg told film critic Joe Leydon that "People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us". "And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of "A.I." that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of "A.I." that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film—all the stuff in the house—was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision." "Eighty percent of the critics got it all mixed up. But I could see why. Because, obviously, I've done a lot of movies where people have cried and have been sentimental. And I've been accused of sentimentalizing hard-core material. But in fact it was Stanley who did the sweetest parts of "A.I.", not me. I'm the guy who did the dark center of the movie, with the Flesh Fair and everything else. That's why he wanted me to make the movie in the first place. He said, 'This is much closer to your sensibilities than my own. He also added: "While there was divisiveness when A.I. came out, I felt that I had achieved Stanley's wishes, or goals."


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Upon re-watching the film many years after its release, BBC film critic Mark Kermode apologized to Spielberg in an interview in January 2013 for "getting it wrong" on the film when he first viewed it in 2001. He now believes the film to be Spielberg's "enduring masterpiece".


title: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

text: Visual effects supervisors Dennis Muren, Stan Winston, Michael Lantieri, and Scott Farrar were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, while John Williams was nominated for Best Original Music Score. "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" lost to "" in both categories. Steven Spielberg, Jude Law and Williams received nominations at the 59th Golden Globe Awards. "A.I." was successful at the Saturn Awards, winning five awards, including Best Science Fiction Film along with Best Writing for Spielberg and Best Performance by a Younger Actor for Osment.


title: Ant

text: Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their geniculate (elbowed) antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists.


title: Ant

text: Ants form colonies that range in size from a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals. Larger colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers (ergates), as well as soldiers (dinergates) and other specialised groups. Nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called "drones" and one or more fertile females called "queens" (gynes). The colonies are described as superorganisms because the ants appear to operate as a unified entity, collectively working together to support the colony.


title: Ant

text: Ants have colonised almost every landmass on Earth. The only places lacking indigenous ants are Antarctica and a few remote or inhospitable islands. Ants thrive in moist tropical ecosystems and may exceed the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals. Their success in so many environments has been attributed to their social organisation and their ability to modify habitats, tap resources, and defend themselves. Their long co-evolution with other species has led to mimetic, commensal, parasitic, and mutualistic relationships.


title: Ant

text: Ant societies have division of labour, communication between individuals, and an ability to solve complex problems. These parallels with human societies have long been an inspiration and subject of study. Many human cultures make use of ants in cuisine, medication, and rites. Some species are valued in their role as biological pest control agents. Their ability to exploit resources may bring ants into conflict with humans, however, as they can damage crops and invade buildings. Some species, such as the red imported fire ant ("Solenopsis invicta") of South America, are regarded as invasive species in other parts of the world, establishing themselves in areas where they have been introduced accidentally.


title: Ant

text: The word "ant" and the chiefly dialectal form "emmet" come from ', ' of Middle English, which come from ' of Old English; these are all related to Low Saxon ', ' and varieties (Old Saxon ') and to German ' (Old High German '). All of these words come from West Germanic "*", and the original meaning of the word was "the biter" (from Proto-Germanic ', "off, away" + ' "cut"). The family name Formicidae is derived from the Latin ' ("ant") from which the words in other Romance languages, such as the Portuguese ', Italian ', Spanish ', Romanian ', and French ' are derived. It has been hypothesised that a Proto-Indo-European word *morwi- was used, cf. Sanskrit "vamrah", Greek μύρμηξ "mýrmēx", Old Church Slavonic "mraviji", Old Irish "moirb", Old Norse "maurr", Dutch "mier", Swedish "myra", Danish "myre", Middle Dutch "miere", Crimean Gothic" miera".


title: Ant

text: The family Formicidae belongs to the order Hymenoptera, which also includes sawflies, bees, and wasps. Ants evolved from a lineage within the stinging wasps, and a 2013 study suggests that they are a sister group of the Apoidea. In 1966, E. O. Wilson and his colleagues identified the fossil remains of an ant ("Sphecomyrma") that lived in the Cretaceous period. The specimen, trapped in amber dating back to around 92 million years ago, has features found in some wasps, but not found in modern ants. The oldest fossils of ants date to the mid-Cretaceous, around 100 million years ago, which belong to extinct stem-groups such as the Haidomyrmecinae, Sphecomyrminae and Zigrasimeciinae, with modern ant subfamilies appearing towards the end of the Cretaceous around 80-70 million years ago. Ants diversified and assumed ecological dominance around 60 million years ago. Some groups, such as the Leptanillinae and Martialinae, are suggested to have diversified from early primitive ants that were likely to have been predators underneath the surface of the soil.


title: Ant

text: During the Cretaceous period, a few species of primitive ants ranged widely on the Laurasian supercontinent (the Northern Hemisphere). Their representation in the fossil record is poor, in comparison to the populations of other insects, representing only about 1% of fossil evidence of insects in the era. Ants became dominant after adaptive radiation at the beginning of the Paleogene period. By the Oligocene and Miocene, ants had come to represent 20–40% of all insects found in major fossil deposits. Of the species that lived in the Eocene epoch, around one in 10 genera survive to the present. Genera surviving today comprise 56% of the genera in Baltic amber fossils (early Oligocene), and 92% of the genera in Dominican amber fossils (apparently early Miocene).


title: Ant

text: Termites live in colonies and are sometimes called ‘white ants’, but termites are not ants. They are the sub-order Isoptera, and together with cockroaches they form the order Blattodea. Blattodeans are related to mantids, crickets, and other winged insects that do not undergo full metamorphosis. Like ants, termites are eusocial, with sterile workers, but they differ greatly in the genetics of reproduction. The similarity of their social structure to that of ants is attributed to convergent evolution. Velvet ants look like large ants, but are wingless female wasps.


title: Ant

text: Ants have a cosmopolitan distribution. They are found on all continents except Antarctica, and only a few large islands, such as Greenland, Iceland, parts of Polynesia and the Hawaiian Islands lack native ant species. Ants occupy a wide range of ecological niches and exploit many different food resources as direct or indirect herbivores, predators and scavengers. Most ant species are omnivorous generalists, but a few are specialist feeders. There is considerable variation in ant abundance across habitats, peaking in the moist tropics to nearly six times that found in less suitable habitats. Their ecological dominance has been examined primarily using estimates of their biomass: myrmecologist E. O. Wilson had estimated in 2009 that at any one time the total number of ants was between one and ten quadrillion (short scale) (i.e., between 10 and 10) and using this estimate he had suggested that the total biomass of all the ants in the world was approximately equal to the total biomass of the entire human race. More careful estimates made in 2022 which take into account regional variations puts the global ant contribution at 12 megatons of dry carbon, which is about 20% of the total human contribution, but greater than that of the wild birds and mammals combined. This study also puts a conservative estimate of the ants at about 20 × 10 (20 quadrillion).


title: Ant

text: Ants range in size from , the largest species being the fossil "Titanomyrma giganteum", the queen of which was long with a wingspan of . Ants vary in colour; most ants are red or black, but a few species are green and some tropical species have a metallic lustre. More than 13,800 species are currently known (with upper estimates of the potential existence of about 22,000; see the article List of ant genera), with the greatest diversity in the tropics. Taxonomic studies continue to resolve the classification and systematics of ants. Online databases of ant species, including AntWeb and the Hymenoptera Name Server, help to keep track of the known and newly described species. The relative ease with which ants may be sampled and studied in ecosystems has made them useful as indicator species in biodiversity studies.


title: Ant

text: Ants are distinct in their morphology from other insects in having geniculate (elbowed) antennae, metapleural glands, and a strong constriction of their second abdominal segment into a node-like petiole. The head, mesosoma, and metasoma are the three distinct body segments (formally tagmata). The petiole forms a narrow waist between their mesosoma (thorax plus the first abdominal segment, which is fused to it) and gaster (abdomen less the abdominal segments in the petiole). The petiole may be formed by one or two nodes (the second alone, or the second and third abdominal segments). Tergosternal fusion, when the tergite and sternite of a segment fuse together, can occur partly or fully on the second, third and fourth abdominal segment and is used in identification. Fourth abdominal tergosternal fusion was formerly used as character that defined the poneromorph subfamilies, Ponerinae and relatives within their clade, but this is no longer considered a synapomorphic character.


title: Ant

text: Like other arthropods, ants have an exoskeleton, an external covering that provides a protective casing around the body and a point of attachment for muscles, in contrast to the internal skeletons of humans and other vertebrates. Insects do not have lungs; oxygen and other gases, such as carbon dioxide, pass through their exoskeleton via tiny valves called spiracles. Insects also lack closed blood vessels; instead, they have a long, thin, perforated tube along the top of the body (called the "dorsal aorta") that functions like a heart, and pumps haemolymph toward the head, thus driving the circulation of the internal fluids. The nervous system consists of a ventral nerve cord that runs the length of the body, with several ganglia and branches along the way reaching into the extremities of the appendages.


title: Ant

text: An ant's head contains many sensory organs. Like most insects, ants have compound eyes made from numerous tiny lenses attached together. Ant eyes are good for acute movement detection, but do not offer a high resolution image. They also have three small ocelli (simple eyes) on the top of the head that detect light levels and polarization. Compared to vertebrates, ants tend to have blurrier eyesight, particularly in smaller species, and a few subterranean taxa are completely blind. However, some ants, such as Australia's bulldog ant, have excellent vision and are capable of discriminating the distance and size of objects moving nearly a meter away.


title: Ant

text: Two antennae ("feelers") are attached to the head; these organs detect chemicals, air currents, and vibrations; they also are used to transmit and receive signals through touch. The head has two strong jaws, the mandibles, used to carry food, manipulate objects, construct nests, and for defence. In some species, a small pocket (infrabuccal chamber) inside the mouth stores food, so it may be passed to other ants or their larvae.


title: Ant

text: Both the legs and wings of the ant are attached to the mesosoma ("thorax"). The legs terminate in a hooked claw which allows them to hook on and climb surfaces. Only reproductive ants (queens and males) have wings. Queens shed their wings after the nuptial flight, leaving visible stubs, a distinguishing feature of queens. In a few species, wingless queens (ergatoids) and males occur.


title: Ant

text: The metasoma (the "abdomen") of the ant houses important internal organs, including those of the reproductive, respiratory (tracheae), and excretory systems. Workers of many species have their egg-laying structures modified into stings that are used for subduing prey and defending their nests.


title: Ant

text: In the colonies of a few ant species, there are physical castes—workers in distinct size-classes, called minor, median, and major ergates. Often, the larger ants have disproportionately larger heads, and correspondingly stronger mandibles. These are known as macrergates while smaller workers are known as micrergates. Although formally known as dinergates, such individuals are sometimes called "soldier" ants because their stronger mandibles make them more effective in fighting, although they still are workers and their "duties" typically do not vary greatly from the minor or median workers. In a few species, the median workers are absent, creating a sharp divide between the minors and majors. Weaver ants, for example, have a distinct bimodal size distribution. Some other species show continuous variation in the size of workers. The smallest and largest workers in "Carebara diversa" show nearly a 500-fold difference in their dry weights.


title: Ant

text: Workers cannot mate; however, because of the haplodiploid sex-determination system in ants, workers of a number of species can lay unfertilised eggs that become fully fertile, haploid males. The role of workers may change with their age and in some species, such as honeypot ants, young workers are fed until their gasters are distended, and act as living food storage vessels. These food storage workers are called "repletes". For instance, these replete workers develop in the North American honeypot ant "Myrmecocystus mexicanus". Usually the largest workers in the colony develop into repletes; and, if repletes are removed from the colony, other workers become repletes, demonstrating the flexibility of this particular polymorphism. This polymorphism in morphology and behaviour of workers initially was thought to be determined by environmental factors such as nutrition and hormones that led to different developmental paths; however, genetic differences between worker castes have been noted in "Acromyrmex" sp. These polymorphisms are caused by relatively small genetic changes; differences in a single gene of "Solenopsis invicta" can decide whether the colony will have single or multiple queens. The Australian jack jumper ant ("Myrmecia pilosula") has only a single pair of chromosomes (with the males having just one chromosome as they are haploid), the lowest number known for any animal, making it an interesting subject for studies in the genetics and developmental biology of social insects.


title: Ant

text: Genome size is a fundamental characteristic of an organism. Ants have been found to have tiny genomes, with the evolution of genome size suggested to occur through loss and accumulation of non-coding regions, mainly transposable elements, and occasionally by whole genome duplication. This may be related to colonisation processes, but further studies are needed to verify this.


title: Ant

text: The life of an ant starts from an egg; if the egg is fertilised, the progeny will be female diploid, if not, it will be male haploid. Ants develop by complete metamorphosis with the larva stages passing through a pupal stage before emerging as an adult. The larva is largely immobile and is fed and cared for by workers. Food is given to the larvae by trophallaxis, a process in which an ant regurgitates liquid food held in its crop. This is also how adults share food, stored in the "social stomach". Larvae, especially in the later stages, may also be provided solid food, such as trophic eggs, pieces of prey, and seeds brought by workers.


title: Ant

text: The larvae grow through a series of four or five moults and enter the pupal stage. The pupa has the appendages free and not fused to the body as in a butterfly pupa. The differentiation into queens and workers (which are both female), and different castes of workers, is influenced in some species by the nutrition the larvae obtain. Genetic influences and the control of gene expression by the developmental environment are complex and the determination of caste continues to be a subject of research. Winged male ants, called drones (termed "aner" in old literature), emerge from pupae along with the usually winged breeding females. Some species, such as army ants, have wingless queens. Larvae and pupae need to be kept at fairly constant temperatures to ensure proper development, and so often are moved around among the various brood chambers within the colony.


title: Ant

text: A new ergate spends the first few days of its adult life caring for the queen and young. She then graduates to digging and other nest work, and later to defending the nest and foraging. These changes are sometimes fairly sudden, and define what are called temporal castes. An explanation for the sequence is suggested by the high casualties involved in foraging, making it an acceptable risk only for ants who are older and are likely to die soon of natural causes.


title: Ant

text: Ant colonies can be long-lived. The queens can live for up to 30 years, and workers live from 1 to 3 years. Males, however, are more transitory, being quite short-lived and surviving for only a few weeks. Ant queens are estimated to live 100 times as long as solitary insects of a similar size.


title: Ant

text: Ants are active all year long in the tropics, but, in cooler regions, they survive the winter in a state of dormancy known as hibernation. The forms of inactivity are varied and some temperate species have larvae going into the inactive state (diapause), while in others, the adults alone pass the winter in a state of reduced activity.


title: Ant

text: A wide range of reproductive strategies have been noted in ant species. Females of many species are known to be capable of reproducing asexually through thelytokous parthenogenesis. Secretions from the male accessory glands in some species can plug the female genital opening and prevent females from re-mating. Most ant species have a system in which only the queen and breeding females have the ability to mate. Contrary to popular belief, some ant nests have multiple queens, while others may exist without queens. Workers with the ability to reproduce are called "gamergates" and colonies that lack queens are then called gamergate colonies; colonies with queens are said to be queen-right.


title: Ant

text: Drones can also mate with existing queens by entering a foreign colony, such as in army ants. When the drone is initially attacked by the workers, it releases a mating pheromone. If recognized as a mate, it will be carried to the queen to mate. Males may also patrol the nest and fight others by grabbing them with their mandibles, piercing their exoskeleton and then marking them with a pheromone. The marked male is interpreted as an invader by worker ants and is killed.


title: Ant

text: Most ants are univoltine, producing a new generation each year. During the species-specific breeding period, winged females and winged males, known to entomologists as alates, leave the colony in what is called a nuptial flight. The nuptial flight usually takes place in the late spring or early summer when the weather is hot and humid. Heat makes flying easier and freshly fallen rain makes the ground softer for mated queens to dig nests. Males typically take flight before the females. Males then use visual cues to find a common mating ground, for example, a landmark such as a pine tree to which other males in the area converge. Males secrete a mating pheromone that females follow. Males will mount females in the air, but the actual mating process usually takes place on the ground. Females of some species mate with just one male but in others they may mate with as many as ten or more different males, storing the sperm in their spermathecae. In "Cardiocondyla elegans," workers may transport newly emerged queens to other conspecific nests where wingless males from unrelated colonies can mate with them, a behavioural adaptation that may reduce the chances of inbreeding.


title: Ant

text: Mated females then seek a suitable place to begin a colony. There, they break off their wings using their tibial spurs and begin to lay and care for eggs. The females can selectively fertilise future eggs with the sperm stored to produce diploid workers or lay unfertilized haploid eggs to produce drones. The first workers to hatch are known as nanitics, and are weaker and smaller than later workers, but they begin to serve the colony immediately. They enlarge the nest, forage for food, and care for the other eggs. Species that have multiple queens may have a queen leaving the nest along with some workers to found a colony at a new site, a process akin to swarming in honeybees.


title: Ant

text: Ants communicate with each other using pheromones, sounds, and touch. Since most ants live on the ground, they use the soil surface to leave pheromone trails that may be followed by other ants. In species that forage in groups, a forager that finds food marks a trail on the way back to the colony; this trail is followed by other ants, these ants then reinforce the trail when they head back with food to the colony. When the food source is exhausted, no new trails are marked by returning ants and the scent slowly dissipates. This behaviour helps ants deal with changes in their environment. For instance, when an established path to a food source is blocked by an obstacle, the foragers leave the path to explore new routes. If an ant is successful, it leaves a new trail marking the shortest route on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants, reinforcing better routes and gradually identifying the best path.


title: Ant

text: Ants use pheromones for more than just making trails. A crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants from farther away. Several ant species even use "propaganda pheromones" to confuse enemy ants and make them fight among themselves. Pheromones are produced by a wide range of structures including Dufour's glands, poison glands and glands on the hindgut, pygidium, rectum, sternum, and hind tibia. Pheromones also are exchanged, mixed with food, and passed by trophallaxis, transferring information within the colony. This allows other ants to detect what task group (e.g., foraging or nest maintenance) other colony members belong to. In ant species with queen castes, when the dominant queen stops producing a specific pheromone, workers begin to raise new queens in the colony.


title: Ant

text: Some ants produce sounds by stridulation, using the gaster segments and their mandibles. Sounds may be used to communicate with colony members or with other species.


title: Ant

text: Ants attack and defend themselves by biting and, in many species, by stinging often injecting or spraying chemicals. Bullet ants ("Paraponera"), located in Central and South America, are considered to have the most painful sting of any insect, although it is usually not fatal to humans. This sting is given the highest rating on the Schmidt sting pain index.


title: Ant

text: The sting of jack jumper ants can be fatal, and an antivenom has been developed for it. Fire ants, "Solenopsis" spp., are unique in having a venom sac containing piperidine alkaloids. Their stings are painful and can be dangerous to hypersensitive people. Formicine ants secrete a poison from their glands, made mainly of formic acid.


title: Ant

text: Trap-jaw ants of the genus "Odontomachus" are equipped with mandibles called trap-jaws, which snap shut faster than any other predatory appendages within the animal kingdom. One study of "Odontomachus bauri" recorded peak speeds of between , with the jaws closing within 130 microseconds on average.


title: Ant

text: The ants were also observed to use their jaws as a catapult to eject intruders or fling themselves backward to escape a threat. Before striking, the ant opens its mandibles extremely widely and locks them in this position by an internal mechanism. Energy is stored in a thick band of muscle and explosively released when triggered by the stimulation of sensory organs resembling hairs on the inside of the mandibles. The mandibles also permit slow and fine movements for other tasks. Trap-jaws also are seen in other ponerines such as "Anochetus", as well as some genera in the tribe Attini, such as "Daceton", "Orectognathus", and "Strumigenys", which are viewed as examples of convergent evolution.


title: Ant

text: A Malaysian species of ant in the "Camponotus" "cylindricus" group has enlarged mandibular glands that extend into their gaster. If combat takes a turn for the worse, a worker may perform a final act of suicidal altruism by rupturing the membrane of its gaster, causing the content of its mandibular glands to burst from the anterior region of its head, spraying a poisonous, corrosive secretion containing acetophenones and other chemicals that immobilise small insect attackers. The worker subsequently dies.


title: Ant

text: Suicidal defences by workers are also noted in a Brazilian ant, "Forelius pusillus", where a small group of ants leaves the security of the nest after sealing the entrance from the outside each evening.


title: Ant

text: In addition to defence against predators, ants need to protect their colonies from pathogens. Some worker ants maintain the hygiene of the colony and their activities include undertaking or "necrophoresis", the disposal of dead nest-mates. Oleic acid has been identified as the compound released from dead ants that triggers necrophoric behaviour in "Atta mexicana" while workers of "Linepithema humile" react to the absence of characteristic chemicals (dolichodial and iridomyrmecin) present on the cuticle of their living nestmates to trigger similar behaviour.


title: Ant

text: Nests may be protected from physical threats such as flooding and overheating by elaborate nest architecture. Workers of "Cataulacus muticus", an arboreal species that lives in plant hollows, respond to flooding by drinking water inside the nest, and excreting it outside. "Camponotus anderseni", which nests in the cavities of wood in mangrove habitats, deals with submergence under water by switching to anaerobic respiration.


title: Ant

text: Many animals can learn behaviours by imitation, but ants may be the only group apart from mammals where interactive teaching has been observed. A knowledgeable forager of "Temnothorax albipennis" can lead a naïve nest-mate to newly discovered food by the process of tandem running. The follower obtains knowledge through its leading tutor. The leader is acutely sensitive to the progress of the follower and slows down when the follower lags and speeds up when the follower gets too close.


title: Ant

text: Controlled experiments with colonies of "Cerapachys biroi" suggest that an individual may choose nest roles based on her previous experience. An entire generation of identical workers was divided into two groups whose outcome in food foraging was controlled. One group was continually rewarded with prey, while it was made certain that the other failed. As a result, members of the successful group intensified their foraging attempts while the unsuccessful group ventured out fewer and fewer times. A month later, the successful foragers continued in their role while the others had moved to specialise in brood care.


title: Ant

text: Complex nests are built by many ant species, but other species are nomadic and do not build permanent structures. Ants may form subterranean nests or build them on trees. These nests may be found in the ground, under stones or logs, inside logs, hollow stems, or even acorns. The materials used for construction include soil and plant matter, and ants carefully select their nest sites; "Temnothorax albipennis" will avoid sites with dead ants, as these may indicate the presence of pests or disease. They are quick to abandon established nests at the first sign of threats.


title: Ant

text: The army ants of South America, such as the "Eciton burchellii" species, and the driver ants of Africa do not build permanent nests, but instead, alternate between nomadism and stages where the workers form a temporary nest (bivouac) from their own bodies, by holding each other together.


title: Ant

text: Weaver ant ("Oecophylla" spp.) workers build nests in trees by attaching leaves together, first pulling them together with bridges of workers and then inducing their larvae to produce silk as they are moved along the leaf edges. Similar forms of nest construction are seen in some species of "Polyrhachis".


title: Ant

text: "Formica polyctena", among other ant species, constructs nests that maintain a relatively constant interior temperature that aids in the development of larvae. The ants maintain the nest temperature by choosing the location, nest materials, controlling ventilation and maintaining the heat from solar radiation, worker activity and metabolism, and in some moist nests, microbial activity in the nest materials.


title: Ant

text: Some ant species, such as those that use natural cavities, can be opportunistic and make use of the controlled micro-climate provided inside human dwellings and other artificial structures to house their colonies and nest structures.


title: Ant

text: Most ants are generalist predators, scavengers, and indirect herbivores, but a few have evolved specialised ways of obtaining nutrition. It is believed that many ant species that engage in indirect herbivory rely on specialized symbiosis with their gut microbes to upgrade the nutritional value of the food they collect and allow them to survive in nitrogen poor regions, such as rainforest canopies. Leafcutter ants ("Atta" and "Acromyrmex") feed exclusively on a fungus that grows only within their colonies. They continually collect leaves which are taken to the colony, cut into tiny pieces and placed in fungal gardens. Ergates specialise in related tasks according to their sizes. The largest ants cut stalks, smaller workers chew the leaves and the smallest tend the fungus. Leafcutter ants are sensitive enough to recognise the reaction of the fungus to different plant material, apparently detecting chemical signals from the fungus. If a particular type of leaf is found to be toxic to the fungus, the colony will no longer collect it. The ants feed on structures produced by the fungi called "gongylidia". Symbiotic bacteria on the exterior surface of the ants produce antibiotics that kill bacteria introduced into the nest that may harm the fungi.


title: Ant

text: Foraging ants travel distances of up to from their nest and scent trails allow them to find their way back even in the dark. In hot and arid regions, day-foraging ants face death by desiccation, so the ability to find the shortest route back to the nest reduces that risk. Diurnal desert ants of the genus "Cataglyphis" such as the Sahara desert ant navigate by keeping track of direction as well as distance travelled. Distances travelled are measured using an internal pedometer that keeps count of the steps taken and also by evaluating the movement of objects in their visual field (optical flow). Directions are measured using the position of the sun.


title: Ant

text: Like all ants, they can also make use of visual landmarks when available as well as olfactory and tactile cues to navigate. Some species of ant are able to use the Earth's magnetic field for navigation. The compound eyes of ants have specialised cells that detect polarised light from the Sun, which is used to determine direction.


title: Ant

text: These polarization detectors are sensitive in the ultraviolet region of the light spectrum. In some army ant species, a group of foragers who become separated from the main column may sometimes turn back on themselves and form a circular ant mill. The workers may then run around continuously until they die of exhaustion.


title: Ant

text: The female worker ants do not have wings and reproductive females lose their wings after their mating flights in order to begin their colonies. Therefore, unlike their wasp ancestors, most ants travel by walking. Some species are capable of leaping. For example, Jerdon's jumping ant ("Harpegnathos saltator") is able to jump by synchronising the action of its mid and hind pairs of legs. There are several species of gliding ant including "Cephalotes atratus"; this may be a common trait among arboreal ants with small colonies. Ants with this ability are able to control their horizontal movement so as to catch tree trunks when they fall from atop the forest canopy.


title: Ant

text: Other species of ants can form chains to bridge gaps over water, underground, or through spaces in vegetation. Some species also form floating rafts that help them survive floods. These rafts may also have a role in allowing ants to colonise islands. "Polyrhachis sokolova", a species of ant found in Australian mangrove swamps, can swim and live in underwater nests. Since they lack gills, they go to trapped pockets of air in the submerged nests to breathe.


title: Ant

text: Not all ants have the same kind of societies. The Australian bulldog ants are among the biggest and most basal of ants. Like virtually all ants, they are eusocial, but their social behaviour is poorly developed compared to other species. Each individual hunts alone, using her large eyes instead of chemical senses to find prey.


title: Ant

text: Some species attack and take over neighbouring ant colonies. Extreme specialists among these slave-raiding ants, such as the Amazon ants, are incapable of feeding themselves and need captured workers to survive. Captured workers of enslaved "Temnothorax" species have evolved a counter-strategy, destroying just the female pupae of the slave-making "Temnothorax americanus", but sparing the males (who do not take part in slave-raiding as adults).


title: Ant

text: Ants identify kin and nestmates through their scent, which comes from hydrocarbon-laced secretions that coat their exoskeletons. If an ant is separated from its original colony, it will eventually lose the colony scent. Any ant that enters a colony without a matching scent will be attacked.


title: Ant

text: Parasitic ant species enter the colonies of host ants and establish themselves as social parasites; species such as "Strumigenys xenos" are entirely parasitic and do not have workers, but instead, rely on the food gathered by their "Strumigenys perplexa" hosts. This form of parasitism is seen across many ant genera, but the parasitic ant is usually a species that is closely related to its host. A variety of methods are employed to enter the nest of the host ant. A parasitic queen may enter the host nest before the first brood has hatched, establishing herself prior to development of a colony scent. Other species use pheromones to confuse the host ants or to trick them into carrying the parasitic queen into the nest. Some simply fight their way into the nest.


title: Ant

text: A conflict between the sexes of a species is seen in some species of ants with these reproducers apparently competing to produce offspring that are as closely related to them as possible. The most extreme form involves the production of clonal offspring. An extreme of sexual conflict is seen in "Wasmannia auropunctata", where the queens produce diploid daughters by thelytokous parthenogenesis and males produce clones by a process whereby a diploid egg loses its maternal contribution to produce haploid males who are clones of the father.


title: Ant

text: Ants form symbiotic associations with a range of species, including other ant species, other insects, plants, and fungi. They also are preyed on by many animals and even certain fungi. Some arthropod species spend part of their lives within ant nests, either preying on ants, their larvae, and eggs, consuming the food stores of the ants, or avoiding predators. These inquilines may bear a close resemblance to ants. The nature of this ant mimicry (myrmecomorphy) varies, with some cases involving Batesian mimicry, where the mimic reduces the risk of predation. Others show Wasmannian mimicry, a form of mimicry seen only in inquilines.


title: Ant

text: Aphids and other hemipteran insects secrete a sweet liquid called honeydew, when they feed on plant sap. The sugars in honeydew are a high-energy food source, which many ant species collect. In some cases, the aphids secrete the honeydew in response to ants tapping them with their antennae. The ants in turn keep predators away from the aphids and will move them from one feeding location to another. When migrating to a new area, many colonies will take the aphids with them, to ensure a continued supply of honeydew. Ants also tend mealybugs to harvest their honeydew. Mealybugs may become a serious pest of pineapples if ants are present to protect mealybugs from their natural enemies.


title: Ant

text: Myrmecophilous (ant-loving) caterpillars of the butterfly family Lycaenidae (e.g., blues, coppers, or hairstreaks) are herded by the ants, led to feeding areas in the daytime, and brought inside the ants' nest at night. The caterpillars have a gland which secretes honeydew when the ants massage them. Some caterpillars produce vibrations and sounds that are perceived by the ants. A similar adaptation can be seen in Grizzled skipper butterflies that emit vibrations by expanding their wings in order to communicate with ants, which are natural predators of these butterflies. Other caterpillars have evolved from ant-loving to ant-eating: these myrmecophagous caterpillars secrete a pheromone that makes the ants act as if the caterpillar is one of their own larvae. The caterpillar is then taken into the ant nest where it feeds on the ant larvae. A number of specialized bacteria have been found as endosymbionts in ant guts. Some of the dominant bacteria belong to the order Hyphomicrobiales whose members are known for being nitrogen-fixing symbionts in legumes but the species found in ant lack the ability to fix nitrogen. Fungus-growing ants that make up the tribe Attini, including leafcutter ants, cultivate certain species of fungus in the genera "Leucoagaricus" or "Leucocoprinus" of the family Agaricaceae. In this ant-fungus mutualism, both species depend on each other for survival. The ant "Allomerus decemarticulatus" has evolved a three-way association with the host plant, "Hirtella physophora" (Chrysobalanaceae), and a sticky fungus which is used to trap their insect prey.


title: Ant

text: Lemon ants make devil's gardens by killing surrounding plants with their stings and leaving a pure patch of lemon ant trees, ("Duroia hirsuta"). This modification of the forest provides the ants with more nesting sites inside the stems of the "Duroia" trees. Although some ants obtain nectar from flowers, pollination by ants is somewhat rare, one example being of the pollination of the orchid "Leporella fimbriata" which induces male "Myrmecia urens" to pseudocopulate with the flowers, transferring pollen in the process. One theory that has been proposed for the rarity of pollination is that the secretions of the metapleural gland inactivate and reduce the viability of pollen. Some plants have special nectar exuding structures, extrafloral nectaries, that provide food for ants, which in turn protect the plant from more damaging herbivorous insects. Species such as the bullhorn acacia ("Acacia cornigera") in Central America have hollow thorns that house colonies of stinging ants ("Pseudomyrmex ferruginea") who defend the tree against insects, browsing mammals, and epiphytic vines. Isotopic labelling studies suggest that plants also obtain nitrogen from the ants. In return, the ants obtain food from protein- and lipid-rich Beltian bodies. In Fiji "Philidris nagasau" (Dolichoderinae) are known to selectively grow species of epiphytic "Squamellaria" (Rubiaceae) which produce large domatia inside which the ant colonies nest. The ants plant the seeds and the domatia of young seedling are immediately occupied and the ant faeces in them contribute to rapid growth. Similar dispersal associations are found with other dolichoderines in the region as well. Another example of this type of ectosymbiosis comes from the "Macaranga" tree, which has stems adapted to house colonies of "Crematogaster" ants.


title: Ant

text: Many plant species have seeds that are adapted for dispersal by ants. Seed dispersal by ants or myrmecochory is widespread, and new estimates suggest that nearly 9% of all plant species may have such ant associations. Often, seed-dispersing ants perform directed dispersal, depositing the seeds in locations that increase the likelihood of seed survival to reproduction. Some plants in arid, fire-prone systems are particularly dependent on ants for their survival and dispersal as the seeds are transported to safety below the ground. Many ant-dispersed seeds have special external structures, elaiosomes, that are sought after by ants as food. Ants can substantially alter rate of decomposition and nutrient cycling in their nest. By myrmecochory and modification of soil conditions they substantially alter vegetation and nutrient cycling in surrounding ecosystem.


title: Ant

text: A convergence, possibly a form of mimicry, is seen in the eggs of stick insects. They have an edible elaiosome-like structure and are taken into the ant nest where the young hatch.


title: Ant

text: Most ants are predatory and some prey on and obtain food from other social insects including other ants. Some species specialise in preying on termites ("Megaponera" and "Termitopone") while a few Cerapachyinae prey on other ants. Some termites, including "Nasutitermes corniger", form associations with certain ant species to keep away predatory ant species. The tropical wasp "Mischocyttarus drewseni" coats the pedicel of its nest with an ant-repellent chemical. It is suggested that many tropical wasps may build their nests in trees and cover them to protect themselves from ants. Other wasps, such as "A. multipicta", defend against ants by blasting them off the nest with bursts of wing buzzing. Stingless bees ("Trigona" and "Melipona") use chemical defences against ants.


title: Ant

text: Flies in the Old World genus "Bengalia" (Calliphoridae) prey on ants and are kleptoparasites, snatching prey or brood from the mandibles of adult ants. Wingless and legless females of the Malaysian phorid fly ("Vestigipoda myrmolarvoidea") live in the nests of ants of the genus "Aenictus" and are cared for by the ants.


title: Ant

text: Fungi in the genera "Cordyceps" and "Ophiocordyceps" infect ants. Ants react to their infection by climbing up plants and sinking their mandibles into plant tissue. The fungus kills the ants, grows on their remains, and produces a fruiting body. It appears that the fungus alters the behaviour of the ant to help disperse its spores in a microhabitat that best suits the fungus. Strepsipteran parasites also manipulate their ant host to climb grass stems, to help the parasite find mates.


title: Ant

text: A nematode ("Myrmeconema neotropicum") that infects canopy ants ("Cephalotes atratus") causes the black-coloured gasters of workers to turn red. The parasite also alters the behaviour of the ant, causing them to carry their gasters high. The conspicuous red gasters are mistaken by birds for ripe fruits, such as "Hyeronima alchorneoides", and eaten. The droppings of the bird are collected by other ants and fed to their young, leading to further spread of the nematode.


title: Ant

text: A study of "Temnothorax nylanderi" colonies in Germany found that workers parasitized by the tapeworm "Anomotaenia brevis" (ants are intermediate hosts, the definitive hosts are woodpeckers) lived much longer than unparasitized workers and had a reduced mortality rate, comparable to that of the queens of the same species, which live for as long as two decades.


title: Ant

text: South American poison dart frogs in the genus "Dendrobates" feed mainly on ants, and the toxins in their skin may come from the ants.


title: Ant

text: Army ants forage in a wide roving column, attacking any animals in that path that are unable to escape. In Central and South America, "Eciton burchellii" is the swarming ant most commonly attended by "ant-following" birds such as antbirds and woodcreepers. This behaviour was once considered mutualistic, but later studies found the birds to be parasitic. Direct kleptoparasitism (birds stealing food from the ants' grasp) is rare and has been noted in Inca doves which pick seeds at nest entrances as they are being transported by species of "Pogonomyrmex". Birds that follow ants eat many prey insects and thus decrease the foraging success of ants. Birds indulge in a peculiar behaviour called anting that, as yet, is not fully understood. Here birds rest on ant nests, or pick and drop ants onto their wings and feathers; this may be a means to remove ectoparasites from the birds.


title: Ant

text: Anteaters, aardvarks, pangolins, echidnas and numbats have special adaptations for living on a diet of ants. These adaptations include long, sticky tongues to capture ants and strong claws to break into ant nests. Brown bears ("Ursus arctos") have been found to feed on ants. About 12%, 16%, and 4% of their faecal volume in spring, summer and autumn, respectively, is composed of ants.


title: Ant

text: Ants perform many ecological roles that are beneficial to humans, including the suppression of pest populations and aeration of the soil. The use of weaver ants in citrus cultivation in southern China is considered one of the oldest known applications of biological control. On the other hand, ants may become nuisances when they invade buildings or cause economic losses.


title: Ant

text: In some parts of the world (mainly Africa and South America), large ants, especially army ants, are used as surgical sutures. The wound is pressed together and ants are applied along it. The ant seizes the edges of the wound in its mandibles and locks in place. The body is then cut off and the head and mandibles remain in place to close the wound. The large heads of the dinergates (soldiers) of the leafcutting ant "Atta cephalotes" are also used by native surgeons in closing wounds.


title: Ant

text: Some ants have toxic venom and are of medical importance. The species include "Paraponera clavata" (tocandira) and "Dinoponera" spp. (false tocandiras) of South America and the "Myrmecia" ants of Australia.


title: Ant

text: In South Africa, ants are used to help harvest the seeds of rooibos ("Aspalathus linearis"), a plant used to make a herbal tea. The plant disperses its seeds widely, making manual collection difficult. Black ants collect and store these and other seeds in their nest, where humans can gather them "en masse". Up to half a pound (200 g) of seeds may be collected from one ant-heap.


title: Ant

text: Although most ants survive attempts by humans to eradicate them, a few are highly endangered. These tend to be island species that have evolved specialized traits and risk being displaced by introduced ant species. Examples include the critically endangered Sri Lankan relict ant ("Aneuretus simoni") and "Adetomyrma venatrix" of Madagascar.


title: Ant

text: Ants and their larvae are eaten in different parts of the world. The eggs of two species of ants are used in Mexican "escamoles". They are considered a form of insect caviar and can sell for as much as US$50 per kg going up to US$200 per kg (as of 2006) because they are seasonal and hard to find. In the Colombian department of Santander, "hormigas culonas" (roughly interpreted as "large-bottomed ants") "Atta laevigata" are toasted alive and eaten. In areas of India, and throughout Burma and Thailand, a paste of the green weaver ant ("Oecophylla smaragdina") is served as a condiment with curry. Weaver ant eggs and larvae, as well as the ants, may be used in a Thai salad, "yam" (), in a dish called "yam khai mot daeng" () or red ant egg salad, a dish that comes from the Issan or north-eastern region of Thailand. Saville-Kent, in the "Naturalist in Australia" wrote "Beauty, in the case of the green ant, is more than skin-deep. Their attractive, almost sweetmeat-like translucency possibly invited the first essays at their consumption by the human species". Mashed up in water, after the manner of lemon squash, "these ants form a pleasant acid drink which is held in high favor by the natives of North Queensland, and is even appreciated by many European palates".


title: Ant

text: In his "First Summer in the Sierra", John Muir notes that the Digger Indians of California ate the tickling, acid gasters of the large jet-black carpenter ants. The Mexican Indians eat the repletes, or living honey-pots, of the honey ant ("Myrmecocystus").


title: Ant

text: Some ant species are considered as pests, primarily those that occur in human habitations, where their presence is often problematic. For example, the presence of ants would be undesirable in sterile places such as hospitals or kitchens. Some species or genera commonly categorized as pests include the Argentine ant, immigrant pavement ant, yellow crazy ant, banded sugar ant, pharaoh ant, red wood ant, black carpenter ant, odorous house ant, red imported fire ant, and European fire ant. Some ants will raid stored food, some will seek water sources, others may damage indoor structures, some may damage agricultural crops directly or by aiding sucking pests. Some will sting or bite. The adaptive nature of ant colonies make it nearly impossible to eliminate entire colonies and most pest management practices aim to control local populations and tend to be temporary solutions. Ant populations are managed by a combination of approaches that make use of chemical, biological, and physical methods. Chemical methods include the use of insecticidal bait which is gathered by ants as food and brought back to the nest where the poison is inadvertently spread to other colony members through trophallaxis. Management is based on the species and techniques may vary according to the location and circumstance.


title: Ant

text: Observed by humans since the dawn of history, the behaviour of ants has been documented and the subject of early writings and fables passed from one century to another. Those using scientific methods, myrmecologists, study ants in the laboratory and in their natural conditions. Their complex and variable social structures have made ants ideal model organisms. Ultraviolet vision was first discovered in ants by Sir John Lubbock in 1881. Studies on ants have tested hypotheses in ecology and sociobiology, and have been particularly important in examining the predictions of theories of kin selection and evolutionarily stable strategies. Ant colonies may be studied by rearing or temporarily maintaining them in "formicaria", specially constructed glass framed enclosures. Individuals may be tracked for study by marking them with dots of colours.


title: Ant

text: The successful techniques used by ant colonies have been studied in computer science and robotics to produce distributed and fault-tolerant systems for solving problems, for example Ant colony optimization and Ant robotics. This area of biomimetics has led to studies of ant locomotion, search engines that make use of "foraging trails", fault-tolerant storage, and networking algorithms.


title: Ant

text: From the late 1950s through the late 1970s, ant farms were popular educational children's toys in the United States. Some later commercial versions use transparent gel instead of soil, allowing greater visibility at the cost of stressing the ants with unnatural light.


title: Ant

text: Anthropomorphised ants have often been used in fables and children's stories to represent industriousness and cooperative effort. They also are mentioned in religious texts. In the Book of Proverbs in the Bible, ants are held up as a good example of hard work and cooperation. Aesop did the same in his fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. In the Quran, Sulayman is said to have heard and understood an ant warning other ants to return home to avoid being accidentally crushed by Sulayman and his marching army., In parts of Africa, ants are considered to be the messengers of the deities. Some Native American mythology, such as the Hopi mythology, considers ants as the very first animals. Ant bites are often said to have curative properties. The sting of some species of "Pseudomyrmex" is claimed to give fever relief. Ant bites are used in the initiation ceremonies of some Amazon Indian cultures as a test of endurance.Ant society has always fascinated humans and has been written about both humorously and seriously. Mark Twain wrote about ants in his 1880 book "A Tramp Abroad". Some modern authors have used the example of the ants to comment on the relationship between society and the individual. Examples are Robert Frost in his poem "Departmental" and T. H. White in his fantasy novel "The Once and Future King". The plot in French entomologist and writer Bernard Werber's "Les Fourmis" science-fiction trilogy is divided between the worlds of ants and humans; ants and their behaviour is described using contemporary scientific knowledge. H.G. Wells wrote about intelligent ants destroying human settlements in Brazil and threatening human civilization in his 1905 science-fiction short story, "The Empire of the Ants." In more recent times, animated cartoons and 3-D animated films featuring ants have been produced including "Antz", "A Bug's Life", "The Ant Bully", "The Ant and the Aardvark", "Ferdy the Ant" and "Atom Ant." Renowned myrmecologist E. O. Wilson wrote a short story, "Trailhead" in 2010 for "The New Yorker" magazine, which describes the life and death of an ant-queen and the rise and fall of her colony, from an ants' point of view. The French neuroanatomist, psychiatrist and eugenicist Auguste Forel believed that ant societies were models for human society. He published a five volume work from 1921 to 1923 that examined ant biology and society.


title: Ant

text: In the early 1990s, the video game "SimAnt", which simulated an ant colony, won the 1992 Codie award for "Best Simulation Program".


title: Ant

text: Ants also are quite popular inspiration for many science-fiction insectoids, such as the Formics of "Ender's Game", the Bugs of "Starship Troopers", the giant ants in the films "Them!" and "Empire of the Ants," Marvel Comics' super hero Ant-Man, and ants mutated into super-intelligence in "Phase IV". In computer strategy games, ant-based species often benefit from increased production rates due to their single-minded focus, such as the Klackons in the "Master of Orion" series of games or the ChCht in "Deadlock II". These characters are often credited with a hive mind, a common misconception about ant colonies.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The Bronze Star Medal (BSM) is a United States Armed Forces decoration awarded to members of the United States Armed Forces for either heroic achievement, heroic service, meritorious achievement, or meritorious service in a combat zone.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: When the medal is awarded by the Army, Air Force, or Space Force for acts of valor in combat, the "V" device is authorized for wear on the medal. When the medal is awarded by the Navy, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard for acts of valor or meritorious service in combat, the Combat "V" is authorized for wear on the medal.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: Officers from the other Uniformed Services of the United States are eligible to receive this award, as are foreign soldiers who have served with or alongside a service branch of the United States Armed Forces.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: Civilians serving with U.S. military forces in combat are also eligible for the award. For example, UPI reporter Joe Galloway was awarded the Bronze Star with "V" device during the Vietnam War for rescuing a badly wounded soldier under fire in the Battle of Ia Drang, in 1965. Another civilian recipient was writer Ernest Hemingway.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The Bronze Star Medal was established by Executive Order 9419, 4 February 1944 (superseded by Executive Order 11046, 24 August 1962, as amended by Executive Order 13286, 28 February 2003).


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The Bronze Star Medal may be awarded by the Secretary of a military department or the Secretary of Homeland Security with regard to the Coast Guard when not operating as a service in the Department of the Navy, or by such military commanders, or other appropriate officers as the Secretary concerned may designate, to any person who, while serving in any capacity in or with the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Space Force, or Coast Guard of the United States, after 6 December 1941, distinguishes, or has distinguished, herself or himself by heroic or meritorious achievement or service, not involving participation in aerial flight—


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The acts of heroism are of a lesser degree than required for the award of the Silver Star. The acts of merit or acts of valor must be less than that required for the Legion of Merit but must nevertheless have been meritorious and accomplished with distinction.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The Bronze Star Medal (without the "V" device) may be awarded to each member of the Armed Forces of the United States who, after 6 December 1941, was cited in orders or awarded a certificate for exemplary conduct in ground combat against an armed enemy between 7 December 1941 and 2 September 1945. For this purpose, the US Army's Combat Infantryman Badge or Combat Medical Badge award is considered as a citation in orders. Documents executed since 4 August 1944 in connection with recommendations for the award of decorations of higher degree than the Bronze Star Medal cannot be used as the basis for an award under this paragraph.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: Most Filipino and American servicemembers who served in the United States Army Forces in the Far East from 6 December 1941 to 10 May 1942 qualify to be awarded the Bronze Star Medal. They must have served on Luzon, Bataan, or Corregidor at any point within that five-month period in order to qualify.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: Effective 11 September 2001, the Meritorious Service Medal may also be bestowed in lieu of the Bronze Star Medal (without Combat "V" device) for meritorious achievement in a designated combat theater.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The Bronze Star Medal was designed by Rudolf Freund (1878–1960) of the jewelry firm Bailey, Banks & Biddle. (Freund also designed the Silver Star.)


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The medal is a bronze star in circumscribing diameter. In the center is a diameter superimposed bronze star, the center line of all rays of both stars coinciding. The reverse bears the inscription with a space for the name of the recipient to be engraved. The star hangs from its ribbon by a rectangular metal loop with rounded corners. The suspension ribbon is wide and consists of the following stripes: white 67101; scarlet 67111; white; center stripe ultramarine blue 67118; white; scarlet; and white.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The Bronze Star Medal with the "V" device to denote heroism is the fourth highest military decoration for valor. Although a service member may be cited for heroism in combat and be awarded more than one Bronze Star authorizing the "V" device, only one "V" may be worn on each suspension and service ribbon of the medal. The following ribbon devices must be specifically authorized in the award citation in order to be worn on the Bronze Star Medal, the criteria for and wear of the devices vary between the services:


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: Colonel Russell P. "Red" Reeder conceived the idea of the Bronze Star Medal in 1943; he believed it would aid morale if captains of companies or of batteries could award a medal to deserving people serving under them. Reeder felt another medal was needed as a ground equivalent of the Air Medal, and suggested calling the proposed new award the "Ground Medal". The idea eventually rose through the military bureaucracy and gained supporters. General George C. Marshall, in a memorandum to President Franklin D. Roosevelt dated 3 February 1944, wrote


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: The Air Medal had been adopted two years earlier to raise airmen's morale. President Roosevelt authorized the Bronze Star Medal by Executive Order 9419 dated 4 February 1944, retroactive to 7 December 1941. This authorization was announced in War Department Bulletin No. 3, dated 10 February 1944.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: President John F. Kennedy amended Executive Order 9419 per Executive Order 11046 dated 24 August 1962 to expand the authorization to include those serving with friendly forces. This allowed for awards where US service members become involved in an armed conflict where the United States was not a belligerent. At the time of the Executive Order, for example, the US was not a belligerent in Vietnam, so US advisers serving with the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces would not have been eligible for the award.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: Since the award criteria state that the Bronze Star Medal may be awarded to "any person ... while serving in any capacity in or with" the US Armed Forces, awards to members of foreign armed services serving with the United States are permitted. Thus, a number of Allied soldiers received the Bronze Star Medal in World War II, as well as UN soldiers in the Korean War, Vietnamese and allied forces in the Vietnam War, and coalition forces in recent military operations such as the Persian Gulf War, War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. A number of Bronze Star Medals with the "V" device were awarded to veterans of the Battle of Mogadishu.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: As a result of a study conducted in 1947, a policy was implemented that authorized the retroactive award of the Bronze Star Medal (without the "V" device) to all soldiers who had received the Combat Infantryman Badge or the Combat Medical Badge during World War II. The basis for this decision was that these badges were awarded only to soldiers who had borne the hardships which resulted in General Marshall's support of the establishment of the Bronze Star Medal. Both badges required a recommendation by the commander and a citation in orders.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: In 2012, two U.S. airmen were allegedly subjected to cyber-bullying after receiving Bronze Star Medals for meritorious non-combat service. The two airmen, who had received the medals in March 2012, had been finance NCOICs in medical units deployed to the War in Afghanistan. The awards sparked a debate as to whether or not the Air Force was awarding too many medals to its members, and whether the Bronze Star should be awarded for non-combat service. This prompted the Air Force to take down stories of the two posted to the internet, and to clarify its criteria for awarding medals. The Air Force contended that meritorious service awards of the Bronze Star outnumber valor awards, and that it views awards on a case-by-case basis to maintain the integrity of the award.


title: Bronze Star Medal

text: This is not the first time that the USAF has been criticized for offering this award. The Department of Defense investigated the award of the Bronze Star Medal (BSM) by the USAF to some 246 individuals after operations in Kosovo in 1999. All but 60 were awarded to officers, and only 16 of those awarded were actually in the combat zone. At least five were awarded to officers who never left Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. During this campaign, the Navy had awarded 69 BSMs, and the Army with 5,000 troops in neighboring Albania (considered part of the combat zone) awarded none. In the end, there was a Pentagon review and decision by Congress in 2001 to stop the awarding of Bronze Stars to personnel outside the combat zone.


title: Romário

text: Romário de Souza Faria (born 29 January 1966), known simply as Romário (), is a Brazilian politician and a former professional footballer. A prolific striker renowned for his clinical finishing, he scored over 750 goals and was the first player to score at least 100 goals for three different clubs. He is considered one of the greatest players of all time. Romário starred for Brazil in their 1994 FIFA World Cup triumph, receiving the Golden Ball as player of the tournament. He was named FIFA World Player of the Year the same year. He came fifth in the FIFA Player of the Century internet poll in 1999, was elected to the FIFA World Cup Dream Team in 2002, and was named in the FIFA 100 list of the world's greatest living players in 2004.


title: Romário

text: At club level, after developing his early career in Brazil, Romário moved to PSV Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 1988. During his five seasons at PSV the club became Eredivisie champions three times, and he scored a total of 165 goals in 167 games. In 1993, he moved to FC Barcelona and became part of Johan Cruyff's "Dream Team", forming an exceptional strike partnership with Hristo Stoichkov. He won La Liga in his first season and finished as the top goalscorer with 30 goals in 33 matches. During the second half of his career Romário played for clubs within the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He won the Brazilian league title with Vasco da Gama in 2000 and was top scorer three times in the league. At the end of his career he also played briefly in Qatar, the United States and Australia.


title: Romário

text: Considered a master of the confined space of the penalty area, his rapid speed over short distances (aided by his low centre of gravity) took him away from defenders, and he was renowned for his trademark toe poke finish. With 55 goals in 70 appearances, Romário is the fourth-highest goalscorer for the Brazil national team, behind Pelé, Neymar and Ronaldo. He is third on the all-time list of Brazilian league's top scorers with 155 goals. He is the seventh-highest goalscorer in the history of football with 780 goals in 1000 official games.


title: Romário

text: Romario started his political career in 2010, when he was elected deputy for the Brazilian Socialist Party. He was then elected senator in 2014. In 2017, he switched parties for Podemos, and in 2021, he joined the Liberal Party.


title: Romário

text: From humble origins, Romário was spotted in childhood when playing for Olaria, a small club from the Rio de Janeiro suburb. He was taken to the junior team of Vasco da Gama where he won two state league titles (1987, 1988) and earned his first call-ups to the national team. Romário came to international attention when he became the top scorer at the 1988 Olympic football tournament.


title: Romário

text: Shortly after the Olympics he moved to PSV Eindhoven, where he won the Eredivisie in 1989, 1991 and 1992. Renowned for his ability to operate in the confined space of the penalty box, Romário scored 165 goals in 167 games in five seasons at PSV.


title: Romário

text: Driven by an unswerving belief in his abilities, Romário's laid back manner and overwhelming self-confidence would be displayed throughout his career, with Guus Hiddink, his coach at PSV, stating, "If he saw that I was a bit more nervous than usual ahead of a big game, he'd come to me and say: ‘Take it easy, coach, I'm going to score and we’re going to win'. What's incredible is that eight out of the ten times he told me that, he really did score and we really did win."


title: Romário

text: Romário moved to Spain's FC Barcelona for the 1993–94 season and became part of Johan Cruyff's "Dream Team", in which, along with players such as strike partner Hristo Stoichkov, midfielders José Mari Bakero, and Michael Laudrup, and prolific goalscoring defender Ronald Koeman, he helped the club win the La Liga title, while becoming the season's top goalscorer with 30 goals in 33 matches. Barcelona also reached the 1994 UEFA Champions League Final, where in spite of being heavy favourites to win, they eventually lost 0–4 to Milan. The buildup to the final saw Spanish newspapers already declaring Barcelona as winners, while Cruyff told his team, "You're better than them, you're going to win". With Romário and Stoichkov leading the Barcelona attack, Milan defender Paolo Maldini conceded his team were underdogs, but they were spurred on by what they perceived as arrogance from Barcelona. One member of the Barcelona back room staff admitted Barcelona were complacent, "We went there to collect the cup, not to compete for it."


title: Romário

text: One of Romário's best performances was scoring a hat-trick in the memorable 5–0 win over Real Madrid in the "El Clásico" at the Camp Nou, with the spectacular opening goal seeing him drag the ball around the defender without it leaving his foot before finishing with a trademark toe-poke into the corner of the net. His highlight for Barcelona in the UEFA Champions League came in the two games against Manchester United where he nutmegged Peter Schmeichel to score at Old Trafford, and scored again in the 4–0 win at the Camp Nou in front of 114,000 fans. Reflecting on the game at the Camp Nou, Manchester United captain Steve Bruce, who played in defence that night, states: "Of all the great things that happened during my career, the thing that sticks out the most is that night because we got our backsides kicked big-style. Stoichkov and Romário are still etched in my memory, especially Romário, who was arguably the best player I ever faced."


title: Romário

text: Romário was named FIFA World Player of the Year in 1994, after being the runner-up in 1993. Although he was lauded for his performances, Romário was prone to controversy, and in 1994 he landed a left hook to Sevilla's Diego Simeone and was suspended for five games. Romário left Barcelona unexpectedly in January 1995 after having a rift with coach Cruyff.


title: Romário

text: In 1995, Romário returned to Brazil to play for Flamengo and spent five years there excluding two short-lasting comebacks to Spain during that period. During a Copa Libertadores match against an Argentine team in 1995, Romário kicked an opposition defender on the chest in retaliation for a punch on his teammate Edmundo. He began the 1996–97 season with the Spanish club Valencia but after having heated arguments with then head coach Luis Aragonés he was soon loaned back to Flamengo.


title: Romário

text: Romário returned to Valencia at the beginning of 1997–98 season. With their new coach Claudio Ranieri claiming that he did not want to have any players staying at the club against their will, Romário, stating his need for good preparation for the World Cup in France, left Valencia for good after playing just six league matches in the season; once again he returned to Flamengo.


title: Romário

text: Romário rejoined Vasco da Gama in 2000 and linked up again with fellow international striker Edmundo. Forming a prolific partnership, the two forwards led Vasco to the final of the 2000 FIFA Club World Championship, with Romário finishing as joint-top goalscorer with three goals. The most notable performance from the pair was a 3–1 defeat of European champions Manchester United at the Estádio do Maracanã, where Romário scored twice in three first-half minutes and Edmundo added a third before half time. Having previously got on well together at Flamengo, the volatile Edmundo became jealous of Romário's privileges, stating the club was "a court, Romário the prince and [club chairman] Eurico Mirando the king". After Vasco's victory a few days later, Romário replied: "Now the court is happy: the king, the prince and the fool [Edmundo]".


title: Romário

text: At 34 years of age, Romário had one of the best seasons in his career while winning the Copa Mercosur and the Brazilian league title with Vasco. Romário's performance was key in the Mercosur final where Vasco faced Brazilian rivals Palmeiras from São Paulo. After splitting the first two matches, a decisive third took place in São Paulo. Palmeiras took a 3–0 lead before half-time. In the second half however, Vasco scored four goals including Romário's winner in the stoppage time, which completed his hat-trick. Romário received both the South American and Brazilian Footballer of the Year awards. He finished both the 2000 and 2001 seasons as the Brazilian league's top goalscorer.


title: Romário

text: From 2002 until 2004, he played for Fluminense. In February 2003, Romário signed a lucrative three-month contract in Qatar with a club Al Sadd but after a disappointing stint without scoring a goal he returned to Fluminense. On 21 October 2004 he was fired from the club after a conflict with the coach. He also attacked a fan who had thrown six live chickens at him during training. Romário then went back once again to play for the team he started at, Vasco da Gama. In 2005, at 39 years of age, Romário scored 22 goals in the Brazilian Championship, making him the league's top goalscorer for the third time.


title: Romário

text: In the beginning of 2006 Romário joined Miami FC along with former 1994 FIFA World Cup teammate Zinho. He helped Miami FC reach their first ever USL-1 Playoffs, scoring 19 league goals in 25 appearances for the team.


title: Romário

text: Newly promoted Campeonato Mineiro side Tupi announced a short-term deal with Romário to play for the Juiz de Fora team in the Taça Minas. However, the Brazilian Football Confederation prohibited the transfer, claiming the contract was signed after the closing of the international transfer window. Romário did not make his debut for the club, but took part in practice sessions.


title: Romário

text: Seen as a publicity coup of the A-League's short history, Romário was signed by AUFC Board member Mel Patzwald to the Australian A-League club Adelaide United for a 5-game guest stint. He played his first match for Adelaide United on 25 November 2006 against the Central Coast Mariners. During his final game on 15 December 2006 he finally scored a goal for Adelaide to end what many considered to be a disappointing spell with the club. In January 2007 he signed a new deal with Vasco da Gama.


title: Romário

text: On 20 May 2007, Romário scored his 1000th goal, a penalty kick against Sport Recife, playing for Vasco da Gama. The Brazilian press claimed him as one of few players in professional football history to achieve this, like Pelé, Puskás, Friedenreich and Binder. The 1000th goal drew much attention from both Brazilian and international press, with the game being stopped for over 20 minutes to allow for celebrations from his fans. There is some controversy over the validity of the 1000 goals, because the number is somewhat inaccurate and Romário's research team also counted his goals in junior, friendly and non-official games.


title: Romário

text: FIFA congratulated Romário on his milestone goal but stated he is still officially on 929 goals, as 77 came in youth football, with others being scored in unofficial friendly matches. RSSSF estimated his career tally to be 968 goals in 1188 games. In 2008, Romário released a DVD with the best goals of his career totaling 900 goals in the disc. Following the landmark goal, Vasco da Gama unveiled a statue of Romário at the Estádio São Januário.


title: Romário

text: On 24 October 2007, it was announced that Romário would take charge of his first match as the interim manager of Vasco against Club América of Mexico in the return leg of their Copa Sudamericana quarter final and he would also participate on the field as a player. Romário, then 41 years of age, replaced Celso Roth as the manager of Vasco da Gama, and also played the match against Club América at the same time. Vasco da Gama president Eurico Miranda declared to Globo Online that Romário would be in charge of the team for the match, but it is likely to only be temporarily. On 6 February 2008 Romário objected to Miranda's intervention in team selection, so was dismissed, but remained contracted to Vasco as a player.


title: Romário

text: On 4 December 2007, Romário announced he had tested positive for finasteride (aka Propecia) after a match against Palmeiras on 28 October. He claims it was in an anti-baldness treatment; however, the drug is banned as it is a masking agent for anabolic steroids.


title: Romário

text: On 5 February 2008, Romário announced his retirement both from playing and coaching, effective at the end of March. This move came somewhat unexpectedly, as fans anticipated that he would retire from playing, but not coaching. He made it clear that he will only concentrate on the FIFA Confederations Cup and helping with the 2014 FIFA World Cup. However, on 27 March, Romário denied that he had retired. Wisdom Chicawanda assisted Romário for his 1345th goal where Wisdom shouted you smashed it.


title: Romário

text: Romário announced on 15 April 2008 at his DVD launch that he would retire from the game of football. He cited his weight as a major factor in his decision to retire from the game. Romário played for many clubs that spanned across five continents for over two decades. He scored 71 goals in 85 appearances for Brazil (including appearances and goals in the Olympics) and claimed to have scored over 1,000 club goals. Romário officially announced his retirement from playing, saying: Officially I'm not playing any more. I've stopped. My time is up. Everything has been a lot of fun.


title: Romário

text: In August 2009, Romário announced that he would come out of retirement to play for America from Rio de Janeiro. He stated that he would play for the club to fulfill his late father's wishes. On 25 November 2009, Romário made his comeback. He came on during the 68th minute of the match between America and Artsul, replacing Adriano. Although he did not score, America won 2–0, which helped the club to win the Carioca Championship Second Division title.


title: Romário

text: As a member of the Brazilian national team, Romário won the silver Olympic medal in Seoul in 1988, finishing as the top-goalscorer with seven goals in six matches. He attained the status of national hero at the 1989 Copa América as he scored the only goal in the final against Uruguay to end Brazil's long trophy drought in front of their own fans at the Maracanã. He was part of the Brazilian squad in the World Cups of 1990 and 1994. He scored 71 goals in 85 international matches (including senior and Olympic teams), being the fourth-highest goalscorer in the history of the Brazilian team.


title: Romário

text: Romário was one of the most talked about stars leading up to the 1990 World Cup in Italy, but picked up a serious injury three months before the big kick-off. Despite doing everything to recover in time and being rewarded with a spot in the squad, his lack of fitness meant he was restricted to playing only 66 minutes in one match, against Scotland. Brazil were eliminated in round of 16 by their rival side Argentina.