World Cup played by ants

  Now I know why the FIFA World Cup is such a big deal. It turns out that it's played by ants with a ball stolen from a dung beetle. That is exciting!

       In the wild, the ants recognize enemies by their pheromones. The organizers of the game used this natural ability to make the ants "ant-agonize" each other, by feeding the Japanese team with Kagoshima pork and the Brazilian team with spare ribs in order to alter the ants' pheromones.

KASHIHARA, Nara -- What has 66 legs and plays soccer? -- An energetic team of 11 ants, getting ready for the Ant World Cup.

A titanic struggle ensued between two tea

ms of ants bearing Japanese and Brazilian colors in their practice game ahead of the Ant World Cup at the Kashihara City Insectarium in Nara Prefecture on Friday.

The Camponotus obscuripes ants, known as Muneaka-oari in Japanese, measured between 7 and 12 mm long. They played using a 1 cm ball on a pitch 20 by 30 cm.

In the wild, the ants recognize enemies by their pheromones. The organizers of the game used this natural ability to make the ants "ant-agonize" each other, by feeding the Japanese team with Kagoshima pork and the Brazilian team with spare ribs in order to alter the ants' pheromones.

Unfortunately, the game ended in an anticlimax, with a draw.(Mainichi)