Come celebrate the recently relocated Cal Academy of Science museum, now on Howard between 4th and 5th Streets and the rejuvenation of their exhibit on ants. (We would have used the picture of the big ant colony [scroll down] to illustrate this posting but -- well, it freaked us out. Sorry.)

Rejuvenation, you ask? Why rejuvenation? Well, so the ants exhibit used to house over a million army ants in a big glass case. Unfortunately (see sidebar), when a shipment of army ant food (crickets) was transported to the museum, they accidentally brought over a colony of dermestid beetles with them. The beetles got into the case when the curators fed the ants the crickets, and promptly ate all the ants. (While army ants are usually fierce predators with the big ol' stingers and jaws, the beetles produce toxic larva, so they won. Ah, the food chain, gets ya every time).

Furthermore, it was quite a tale of woe getting a new shipment of army ants in the exhibit from their home in Central America back to their new SOMA home. Click on through for the gory details.