The Boiotian Shield

[PMBardunias]

A French scholars argues H's gold digging ants (which are described as being the size of small dogs and furry) are actually a kind of Asian Marmot that behaves pretty much as H describes Apparently the neat coincidence is their name is awfully close to the Greek for Ant

I've read this theory, and it may well be correct, but I think mine is better for a few reasons: 1) A Sanskrit test, the Brihat Samhita (505-587 AD) describes using termite mounds to find ore deposits, so the concept was known in the region. Obviously the date it much later, but the termites have been doing it long before we showed up, so there is no reason to expect that it was not known earlier. 2) Why do they need to wait for the hottest part of the day and flee from marmots?? If they were termites this would make sense, not the fleeing per se, but the notion that you should do it during the heat of day when the termites have pulled back from the surface of the mound. They don't like being disturbed and depending on the species can be quite nasty, with soldiers biting you painfully. 3) Termites attack in swarms, Marmots don't "muster". 4) Termites look just like "greek ants"- moreso because to many cultures termites are simply "white ants".

Edit: Out of curiosity i did a quick search on Gold and Termites. This is from a modern article on termites in Africa being used to find gold and is most interesting in light of H's description:

Their tiny jaws can give a nasty bite, too. Petts claims she has mostly escaped that, partly by working during the heat of the day when the termites retreat underground. She has apparently fared better than North, who has been termite bait in Africa many times. Simon Bolster, a geochemist with Newmont Mining Corporation, has far freakier tales from Africa. He once saw six snakes, including two cobras, inside a mound. "Since then I have always been very wary when sampling termite mounds," he says.

Against this we have one line: "...in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes". This too may be explainable. Many animals make their homes in termite mounds. Jackals, Honey badgers, and striped hyaenas all fit the bill for a size between fox and dog- you could not ask for a better description of a jackal for example. All of these might chase you if they had cubs in a den there. Of the three, the most interesting to me is the Striped Hyaena. The Persian King evidently had some of the animal (ant or perhaps just something associated with the ants). If you gave a marmot, overgrown rat, to the Shah of Shahs as a pet I doubt you'd last long at court, but a striped Hyaena is a beautiful animal- like a cross between a Zebra and a dog, with a long crest along the spine. They evidently make decent pets as well.