RE: https://hachyderm.io/@TheIdOfAlan/115527111496219848

This is a great scan of one of my favorite and most vexing M. C. Escher drawings.

It's an ant, and she is rendered in excellent detail. So... *who* is she?

She must be a Dutch ant. She is black, and her head shape makes me think Camponotus. But her thorax is all wrong for a carpenter. Her throrax is like a wood ant.

Her head is too robust for a black garden ant, and her gaster isn't pointed.

She has ocelli and the hint of wing buds like a queen.

In short, I think he drew this by carefully observing ants, perhaps with magnification, but not ants of just one kind. Escher liked to draw ants enough he may have done this from memory. She is very mysterious.

Unless someone can point out who she is for me!

Looking at a bunch of Dutch ants I think it's most likely a wood ant, and he's just given her a big wide head because the head is the most fun part of the ant to draw. He's also made her all black rather than hint that she is bicolor... although some black wood ants do exist.

The way he's rendered the geometry of her head is amazing.

@futurebird
Wild guess: Formica fusca?
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grauschwarze_Sklavenameise_Formica_fusca_01_(MK).jpg

Looking at a bunch of Dutch ants I think it's most likely a wood ant, and he's just given her a big wide head because the head is the most fun part of the ant to draw. He's also made her all black rather than hint that she is bicolor... although some black wood ants do exist.

The way he's rendered the geometry of her head is amazing.

I've found the studies for the final drawing:

In the second one you can see that the gaster is shaded as if it's a darker color than the body, which makes the "red wood ant" theory more likely IMO.

The head is less stylized on the second drawing. I think he just got excited by the geometry of the ant's head and made it strange in a way that made it harder to pinpoint the species in the final drawing.

There is so much geometry in the exoskeleton of an ant. You could look at it forever and still not fully understand all of the ways it has been shaped by her purpose.

The most famous ants of M. C. Escher, the ones on the Möbius strip, are in my opinion *not* living ants of any species but cute ant robots.

They are highly stylized wile retaining some essential "essence of ant"

(I would also like to point out that NO ONE has made a robot as good as these robot ants in real life. Show me that and I will be impressed forever.)

@futurebird

The image you posted seems a preparatory sketch for

Möbius Strip II

Escher made a number of prints based on the concept of the Möbius strip, discovered by the German mathematician and astronomer Ferdinand Möbius (1790-1868). Esc

Museum Escher in The Palace (escherinhetpaleis.nl)

Not sure why you call them robots.

The most famous ants of M. C. Escher, the ones on the Möbius strip, are in my opinion *not* living ants of any species but cute ant robots.

They are highly stylized wile retaining some essential "essence of ant"

(I would also like to point out that NO ONE has made a robot as good as these robot ants in real life. Show me that and I will be impressed forever.)

@futurebird xscreensaver includes an animated version, somehow I never made the connection that it was an escher reference https://youtu.be/77Nib6jQrXc