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EDIBLE INSECTS - Weaver Ants & CricketsAmbience: Gamelon This month is high season for weaver ants and crickets, two insects that are popular food items in Cambodia. I'm Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.Peter Menzel is co-author of the book Man Eating Bugs, which looks at cultures that consume insects as part of a normal diet. During the course of his research, he watched rural Cambodians harvest weaver ants from trees."Once the women located the weaver ant nests they took a long pole, they connected a basket to it and shook the tree right underneath the weaver ant nest. The weaver ants came raining out of the tree and when they landed on the women they bit the women so that the women had to be constantly wiping and rubbing the ants off of their bodies. The way that they cook these ants was they put them in a pan and put them on a fire, no oil. Just fry them up and they tasted rather crispy sour. It almost tasted like they'd been cooked in vinegar because of the formic acid that the ants have in them naturally."And Weaver ants aren't the only insects that find their way onto Cambodian plates. Right now, we're listening to the sounds of crickets, being stir fried with oil.Ambience: Crickets frying"People actually used blue lights, ultraviolet lights to attract the crickets at night and they were able to collect over the course of an evening maybe four or five gallons of crickets which they fried up and sold in the market. (33:09) The crickets in northern Cambodia were an important part of the diet. They were a snack food but they were also eaten along with rice as part of a normal diet."Please visit our website at www.pulseplanet.com.Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.