How Realistic Are These Animated Movie Insects?

How Realistic Are These Animated Movie Insects?

Animated movies are not just for children, as they can contain beautiful landscapes, hidden jokes, and complex characters. Some of the best ones turn real critters or objects into talking main characters, such as insects, animals, and appliances. There are a few animated films with insect-based characters that are still widely popular to an extent, but how realistic are the protagonists to our real-life pests? Let’s look into three popular movies and how the picturesque characters relate to the much-less-enjoyable insects from our world.

A Bug’s Life

This is definitely one of the most popular animated movies that focuses on an insect as the main character, if only for the sheer number of insects and arachnids that make up the whole character list. The storyline of evil grasshoppers stealing food from ants and needing to be stopped by the underdogs is an interesting one, but it may be even more fascinating to discover that it is not very realistic…

The Worker Ants

Before discussing the antagonists and main plot, let’s focus on the initial protagonists of the film. Flik’s ant colony seems to only be made up of worker ants, with the exception of the queen and her daughters. Both male and female ants forage for food and bring back to the colony, a process that seems pretty streamlined until Flik accidentally ruins everything with his supposedly-helpful invention. Flik is a typical worker ant who lives to gather food and protect the colony, two jobs that most eusocial worker insects share. But in real life, worker ants are all females! These are the ants that we see marching across our picnic blankets, through our kitchen, and across the sidewalk. The workers are the backbone of the colony, as they perform all of the tasks vital to their survival. Each female worker ant has the important job of either tending to the countless eggs that the queen lays, foraging for food, or protecting the nest from predators. 

Male ants, on the other hand, are winged drones that simply live to mate. They basically just stay in the nest, mate with the queen, and then pass away. There are far fewer males than females in a colony, which is why the short lives of male ants do not affect the general wellbeing of the nest. Between this circle-of-life fact and the likable personality of Flik, we understand why the team of writers decided to fudge the details of ant life for the film.

The Evil Grasshoppers

As for the antagonists of the film, including the main villain Hopper who scared many children that grew up with this film, the actual facts are a little more blurred. The movie grasshoppers are big bullies who make the ants give up their food for them, and threaten the colony when Flik accidentally loses the stash of food. Real grasshoppers are definitely the more physically intimidating insects, but they do not set out to bully other insects. Also, since grasshoppers only eat dead insects when they desperately need protein and stick to plants otherwise, they would not interact with ants very much at all. 

Real ants are also much more equipped in self-defense than these animated ants are. The worker ants who defend the nest have a few different methods of preventing outsiders from entering and potentially ending the colony, and it all depends on the species. Most worker ants will bite or sting any intruders, which usually is enough to convince the invader that this isn’t the best idea. In more extreme cases, the ants will kill the larger insects and potentially eat them for protein. If Pixar was to include this detail, the rating of A Bug’s Life would probably have to be bumped up a couple of notches. 

The Need for Warriors

The quest in this movie (because there always seems to be a quest in animated movies) is all about Flik being sent on a fool’s errand to find warrior bugs to help the ants defend their home. The queen really just said this to get rid of Flik and his clumsiness, but he returned with what he believed were the best warriors around. The strange crew turned out to just be circus bugs, but they helped the ant colony scare away the evil grasshoppers in the end. Real ants would never go out and find other insects to help defend their colony, mainly because of the aforementioned defense tactics the workers use. They would attack anyone who tries to get inside the nest, which is definitely a sign that they can defend themselves. 

Some may be wondering how ants can tell which specific ants live in their nest, and which ones are from a different colony that are just trying to be sneaky. Worker ants have an excellent sense of smell, thanks to the amount of various pheromones they use to communicate every day. The invisible chemicals are used to convey all kinds of messages between insects, and ants of a certain colony will have the same chemical signature. So if a random ant comes to the nest entrance and has a different chemical scent than the ants inside, the guardian workers will not let them in. Due to their natural desire to protect the nest, ants would never dream of asking another insect species for help, no matter how friendly they are.

Bee Movie

If you have been on the internet for the past decade, you may have come across your fair share of memes with this movie. The lines and main characters have been ironically quoted countless times, which could be attributed to how bizarre the plot is when you think about it. This seems like a fun movie about bees on the surface, but you may be surprised to learn that it is actually not very accurate to the real pests.

The Worker Bees

This is another situation where the character designs were given variety for the sake of entertainment, since they do not serve any kind of educational purpose otherwise. Barry and his friends are mostly males, and the overall hive is made up of male and female worker bees. They go to bee college (which actually seems pretty fun) to learn all about honey and flowers before going off to forage on their own. In real life – you guessed it – all worker bees are females. Each worker has her own role in the hive that is essential to its survival, and they are even predetermined for a certain role at birth. Genetics and hormones may dictate the initial jobs of the bees, but they can adapt with different situations and dire needs of the hive. The jobs include foraging by collecting nectar, pollen, and water, as well as building up the honeycomb and cleaning the hive and bees. Some bees even get to attend to the queen or build out the hive. No wonder “busy bee” is a popular saying!

Male bees are also called “drones” and only exist to mate with the queen. They do not have stingers and are unable to forage for nectar or pollen, so they don’t have many options for activities. The male drones wait for their chance to mate with the queen, compete with each other to win the coveted role, and then die after mating. Males also overwinter with the queen so they can mate right when it starts warming up again, in order to give the colony the best chance of having an expansive population. But again, this may have been too drastic of a detail to include, even for this movie.

The Bloodthirsty Male Mosquitoes

This one is a smaller detail, but it is still something to note. There are a couple of other insect jokes in this film, including the dreaded mosquito. In the scene where Barry lands on the windshield of a honey truck, he talks to a male mosquito who is excitedly headed to Alaska to try out the moose blood. While this whole scene has quick jokes that are actually still pretty funny, this detail is wildly inaccurate. First of all, male mosquitoes don’t even consume blood. They eat nectar like bees and other pollinators do. Female mosquitoes hunt for blood when they need the protein for their eggs, which is why summer is often full of mosquito bites when they are reproducing the quickest. 

Second of all, mosquitoes do not pick which state or city to visit for a specific blood. They tend to stay local to the body of water that they were hatched in, but they can fly a little further if they are really desperate. Any mosquitoes found on the windshield, if they are still alive, do not know what is happening, never mind where Alaska is. On the plus side, the movie did get the moose detail right. Moose are bitten by mosquitoes like any other creature, so who’s to say that moose blood isn’t a delicacy to biting insects?

Pinocchio

With the latest live-action remake that Disney added to their repertoire, Pinocchio has reentered the minds of many fans for the first time in probably a while. Whether or not the titular character is likable or annoying is up for debate, but the character that seems to be a crowd favorite is Jiminy Cricket. As fun as his top hat and umbrella combination is, he is unfortunately not very accurate to real crickets. 

The Legend of Jiminy Cricket

Jiminy is known for his sage advice, lovable face, and dapper clothing. He is the perfect companion for a lonely puppet boy who is trying to figure out his place in the world. But as much as viewers love this character, he is the complete opposite of a real cricket in just about every way. Jiminy looks more like a small green man than a cricket, which was done purposefully to make him more likable to young viewers of the movie. Real crickets have 6 legs, antennae longer than their bodies, and wings. A few varieties can be green, but most are yellow-brown or dark brown. They are also nocturnal, which means that Jiminy would have been interrupting quite a bit of Pinocchio’s sleep. 

Crickets like to live outside, mainly in fields or near garbage (Jiminy would never), but will get closer to homes when they are drawn to the lights. Crickets tend to eat plants, insects, and fabric the most, which is why they can be a real pest both inside and outside. The chirping that we hear is called stridulation, where male crickets rub their front wings together to create a chirp for alerting potential mates that they are available. Some of these chirps may actually be bits of wisdom that Jiminy would deliver, but we doubt it.

Pest Control Services is a Real Solution for Your Pest Problems!

These movies are a fun way to spend a couple of hours, but do you know what isn’t an enjoyable pastime? Finding a pest invasion in your home! Although the weather is gradually cooling down and the colored leaves are beginning to fall more frequently, pests are still as active as ever. This is the time of year when they begin looking for an overwintering home as shelter from the upcoming cold temperatures. Our team is here for all of your pest concerns and problems, as we provide personalized pest treatments year-round! Contact us to learn more about our EPA-approved treatments and how we can make sure there aren’t any ants, bees, or crickets trying to catch the next movie night in your home.

***Disclaimer:  Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act recognizes “fair use” copywriter content as such:  “Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phono-records or by any other means specified by that section, for proposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.” This blog post may contain certain copyrighted works and characters that were not specifically authorized to be used by the copyrighted holder(s), however, the content on this post qualifies as “commentary” on the copyrighted works under the “fair use” doctrine of the U.S. Copyright Act and is thereby protected by federal law. Furthermore, we do not claim any ownership or creative rights of any characters on this list, and all rights outside of the fair use doctrine belong to the respective owner(s).

Citations

House crickets. (n.d.). Pest World. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.pestworld.org/pest-guide/occasional-invaders/house-crickets/ 

How do ants identify different members of their society?. (2015, August 13). EurekAlert! Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/817551 

Ant life cycle. (n.d.). Harvard Forest. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/ants/life-cycle 

Grad, P. (2010, May 19). Bee hive hierarchy and activities. Big Island Bees. Available at https://bigislandbees.com/blogs/bee-blog/14137353-bee-hive-hierarchy-and-activities (Accessed on October 3, 2022).

Hertzberg, R. (2019, March 22). Honeybees all have different jobs to accomplish – Here’s how they get them. National Geographic. Available at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/honey-bee-job-queen-hive-animals (Accessed on October 3, 2022).