War is from "The Leafcutters" series - a project that includes video, photography, drawing and sculpture. Location: Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica. Cast: Two colonies, Atta cephalotes Leafcutter ants are one of the few species to wage organized warfare. They have different strategies depending on the location and severity of the war. If the battle is close to home a colony will employ its huge soldiers. If it’s far away, the small and mid-sized workers are engaged. Ant wars are hard to find in the forest; the battles spread out into the leaf litter. In order to film these mini-gladiators, I placed small, white plastic sheets around the area they were fighting. During the day the ants went about their orderly business cutting leaves, quickly habituating to the new surfaces and ignoring them. But, every night the bellicose colony attacked its neighbor. Though many ants were slaughtered, the colonies did not fight to the death. Three weeks into the war the aggressor called it quits.
