I got to work this morning a little sleepy and shoved my breakfast in the microwave oven. After five minutes, it was finished cooking, and upon removing it, I noticed several ants inside the oven, apparently unphased by the intense microwave radiation. I mentioned this to the guy across the hall (a more frequent user of the oven), and he said he'd noticed the same thing, and no longer bothers to remove the ants before heating his food.
How can the ants survive? Surely they must contain at least some water, which absorbs microwave energy, and is what makes microwave cooking effective in most foods. Are they simply too small? They're certainly tiny compared with the wavelength of the microwaves, which is almost 5 inches. But it seems to me that shouldn't matter: the ants ought to experience an oscillating electric field which excites the water molecules in them, regardless of how small they are. Perhaps they're only safe because they crawl along the metal bottom and sides of the oven, and would perish if they ventured up onto the glass dish, where the amplitude of the fluctuating electric field is greater?