Colombia's Roasted Ants: Tasty, Crunchy, Nutritious

CURITI, Colombia - Every year around this time, winged queen ants with huge behinds crawl from their earthen catacombs into the sunlight.

Many never get to enjoy the warmth. Peasants scurrying from hill to hill scoop them into sacks and tin kettles, roast them and sell them as the best snack around.

The annual ant harvest is a centuries-old tradition in the hills of Santander, a lush region dotted with tobacco and sugar-cane fields.

"Delicious ants!" Luis Gomez cried, waving bags of the cooked insects at cars passing a tollbooth near Curiti.

Many people might be disgusted by the product. The ants' bottoms look like blood-engorged ticks. But to those familiar with the taste - similar to popcorn or nuts - it is often a welcome snack. Gomez's sales were brisk; about one-third of the cars stopped to buy some.

Connoisseurs eat only the fleshy rump, tossing away the rest of the inch-long body of what the locals call the "hormiga culona" - big-bottomed ant. The ant's scientific name is atta laeviagata.

The snack is popular among city dwellers of all social levels. Colombians sometimes ship packets of ants to relatives in the United States.

The ant is a symbol of the hardiness of the peasants who toil in Santander's fields, and is a source of pride. In Barichara, a Spanish colonial town of flagstoned streets and red-tiled roofs, the mayor's office boasts a statue of the ant.

Some buses have ants painted on their sides, and regional lottery shops are named "The Little Ant."

"It is a lot like the working class. The ant doesn't rest," said Mayor Raul Sanchez. "Each ant carries seven times its weight, a telling indication of how strong it is."

Ants play a role in indigenous cultures in the Colombian Amazon, said Dr. Isabel Crooke, an English physician and former anthropologist who works in Barichara. People harvested them before Spanish colonizers arrived.

A peasant can collect two pounds of ants in half a day and sell them for 10,000 pesos, or about $12.50, more than double the income for an entire day of harvesting crops.