The last man on earth, so to speak.

Hello ATS thought I would share an interesting story with you guys.
Also it raises a bunch of questions with me and maybe with you all as well regarding genetics, Modified food sources and other seemingly nameless qualities.


It all came to an end today, Flik is dead.
So the question is… Who cares about the life and death, or the struggles of an ant?

Well probably no one, but there are times when something happens among the lowly creatures of the earth to gain,… if nothing else, the modest attention of us gods here on Mt. Olympus.

This is just something I have been astonished with for the last few years and it ended this morning I think.
You see, in 2001 I built a large scale Gel type ant farm aquarium and consequently it become popular in my house among the kids. It was about 1 foot wide and 2 feet long.
It was filled with a generic sting less black ant at first and later I filled it with a tropical fire ant, the colony of which was under a concrete slab that I was breaking up one day on my patio. I had already had my ant farm full of these ridiculous black ants but they did nothing. So I managed to gather with great difficulty a few thousand of these pissy little fiery bastards and place them into my ant farm. Within a day the battle was almost over and the smaller defenseless black ants were all but dead. LOL

The next day I went out and found the queen under some more slab. I placed it into the farm and soon it became home for a large population of industrious creatures.


But here is where it gets weird…

The colony thrived for a good while sense late 2001 and around 2007 when I got out of the military the queen had died. The rest of the ants lived their normal lives for a few months I guess until they started thinning out. What was interesting was that every time some died, workers would take them underground to this room they had built and stored the bodies, they wouldn’t eat them. Just die and store, die and store…

So, that went on like I said for about 4 months I guess until there was only one ant left.
Some may ask…( if even remotely interested)… why I didn’t throw out this dead colony at this point or before. Simple,… it’s because the top of this ant Farm became a kind of catch all for mail and loose papers, so it went forgotten.
So anyway about a month later my housemaid asked me if she could put a caterpillar inside because there was an ant. When I checked I was surprised to see that one ant was indeed still moseying around, this got me interested in a kind of “last man on earth” type of scenario and I wanted to see how far it would play out, I’m sick like that.


Little did I know at the time it would play out so long?
As it turns out that last ant a small worker built a new room and took to task transferring the bodies of his colony to it. Once full he repeated the process again and again.

This went on for …get this…TWO and ONE HALF YEARS..WTF?!
This small worker, who is supposed to have a life span of no more than a few months managed to hang on for two and a half years tirelessly performing its task. My niece eventually named it Flik after the main character in the movie “ A Bugs Life”


Exterior quote:

"Queens live an average of about 3 years and in nature typically survive 2-6 years. The record longevity of a queen is 7 years. Males die a short time after they swarm and mate. Worker ants usually live 4-6 weeks after emerging as adults. However, imported fire ants have different sizes of workers and these workers live varying lengths of time, depending on their size and the temperature in the nest. Small workers live 1-2 months, medium workers live 2-3 months, and large workers live 3-6 months. Fire ant workers change duties as they age. The youngest ants tend the brood and the queen. Ants foraging outside the nest are the oldest. Thus, ants that you see foraging on sidewalks and in houses are probably already old and may live only a few days or weeks."

Occasionally I would throw in a small peace of apple or banana, though I never saw it actually eat.

A 1-2 month life span for this poor little gal, extended out for 29 months or so.
If it were a human with an average life span of 67.2 years this creature essentially lived to have been between 1000 to 2000 years old, possibly older.

I assume it ended today, as there was no movement in the tank and the “great room” was still full of bodies. So either it escaped which seems unlikely, or went into the room and lied down to die like her ancient kin. WEIRD!

Unfortunately I didn’t have much time to examine the interior or to debate keeping the aquarium because my brother in law has been needing it.

So this situation raises some questions with me.

1. Why was only one in this colony living so long?
2. Why was it not a queen that was living but a simple short lived worker?
3. Could its life have been prolonged by the GMO foods I was feeding it, banana, apple, peach juice? And if that is the case why was it affecting only one?
4. Could its genetics have developed over time to make it live long for a specific reason?
5. I found it interesting that it did nothing more than it’s laborious job for so long like the robot from that WALLE movie. (great another animated Disney reference jeez)..

6. Could there have been something in it that could have been transferred to humans to make them live longer? Of course after modification and experiment.


I know of some animals, worms in particular that have been changed genetically by humans to live the equivalent life span of something like 300,000 years.
But I don’t know about this in ants, and of course I didn’t change it’s life span, not knowingly anyway.
Here is a study on the longevity in worms…WOW Awesome read!!! (**sarcasm**)
www.physorg.com...

Anyway I thought I would share this anomaly with you guys because something similar happened to my cousin in America as well, but not as extreme.
Anyway I thought it was cool, and felt the smallest twinge of remorse when Flik didn’t come out to play this morning…

reply to post by snowen20

S & F

Thanks for posting a nice thread here at ATS instead of the usual Gloom and Doom, Although it is/was a last man/ant on Earth scenario.

Well that was an interesting read.
I don't know what to say about the extended life span but the repeating the same task over and over again. [Moving the dead bodies] could have been the last signal the queen sent out. Flik probably walked around looking for instructions. [As a drone it would] and probably found her last instructions [A chemical trail] and simply tried to the best of his ability to carry it out all this time.

Rest in peace little ant. What a strange yet interesting story. I have no idea why it lived so long. Hopefully someone else can give us some insight.

Yeah this creature was totally lost I suppose without anyothers around.

That last signal sent out by the ant queen....Weird.. lol
It reminds me some movie I saw once. This machine was just doing the last thing it was programmed to do when it was found by humans on a planet. No im not talking about a Disney movie..

The thing that interests me is the physical damage that the body of this ant would have sustained over such a long period of time. How did it continually regenerate the necessary repairs to its body. They don live to 1-2 months for just no reason. So this thing, I don't know maybe somehow some way inherited a longer life gene from the queen that usually lives 2- 6 years. But a lowly worker, really? I was all ways under the impression that where genetics were concerned ants ran a tight ship.

Interesting that ants being one of the most over looked of earths creatures that one caught the attention of a human, perhaps that's a feat in and of itself, moreover to be named by a human. I should really immortalize it and get a star named after her $60.00 . LOL

I guess my question is this:

If the Human race were subjected to a mass extinction event wherein the span of say 2 generations or so everyone would be dead; could/ would the genetic qualities of a person change in such a way as to lengthen their life span?

What would be the reason for this, is it to insure that a mate can be found for the survival of a species?

Was it a freak accident, where the above occurred but only 1 in 50,000 were effected?

Can mutations of this level occur and what might cause it? The gel in the ant farm that was obviously ingested?

Im curious to know what other qualities the ant had that Ill never know about.