"I didn't ant-icipate (forgive me!) the style of The Antics of Ant, but I enjoyed the drawings," says biologist, naturalist, and author E. O. Wilson.
This collection of funny, clever, and sometimes dry cartoons remained a secret, hidden between pages of academic and scientific documents, for nearly five decades. Jane Margaret Bowles was a biologist and ecologist with a lifelong passion for poetry, humor, and sketching plants and animals. After her death, these four sets of ant drawings were discovered-one of which appeared on the reverse side of a typewritten plant physiology essay. Other clues date the illustrations to the mid-1970s, and no one is sure if Bowles showed even one of them to another living soul.
Today, they are yours to enjoy. See the world in a new and enchanting way and discover the small, delightful surprises hiding within each page as you follow this parade of seemingly infinite wordplay and visual manifestations of the ant body...or antatomy.
About the Author: Jane Margaret Bowles (1952-2013) was born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya, where she developed a passion for nature and the habit of sketching plants and animals. She spent her youth in Oxfordshire, England, where she became an avid bell ringer and continued her exploration of poetry, humor, and cartoons.
After completing her undergraduate studies in biology at Scotland's University of Aberdeen, she pursued a doctorate in plant ecology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, where she settled permanently. She quietly created The Antics of Ant during the 1970s, and it isn't clear whether or not she ever showed the drawings to anyone.
