Ants: What The Hell Are These Things, Anyway? Ant-Rant, Ant-Facts and Ant-Lore

reply to post by Eidolon23


Looks like we have our weekend viewing all lined up.

While we are on to the Queens, more, lots more I hope, we can get to soon, I wanted to add this quote manumitted from Myth of The Ant Queen by Steven Johnson, from a link provided by yourself...

Dig up a colony of harvester ants and you'll almost invariably find that the Queen is missing. To track down the colony's matriarch you'll need to examine the bottom of the hole you've just dug to excavate the colony: you'll find a narrow, almost invisible passageway, that leads another two feet underground to a tiny vestibule burrowed out of the earth.

There you will find the Queen. She will have been secreted there by a handful of ladies-in-waiting at the first sign of disturbance. The passageway, in other words, is an emergency escape hatch, not unlike the fallout shelter buried beneath the West Wing.

Myth of The Ant Queen by Steven Johnson. From the anthology: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software

Star and Flag

Excellent post OP.Very well put together,and I definitely learned a few things about ants I didn't know.

I've always been amazed at the raw strength of ants.I'm not a huge fan crawling bugs like spiders,centipedes, roaches etc.. But honestly ants never bothered me,I find them interesting.However I've never had a problem with big or aggresive ants,if that were the case I'd probably feel differently.

I had a small ant problem a few years ago when I bought my house,and got rid of them pretty easily.As I may find them interesting I don't want them inside my house.

I have never seen ant carry a fallen commrade back to the mess hall at HQ.
If I ever have to deal with an ant problem again (knocks on wood) I will definitely be looking for that behavior.

Good Luck to you on your next offensive,give em some Shock and Awe.

Originally posted by Xoanon
reply to post by Eidolon23

 

Looks like we have our weekend viewing all lined up.

While we are on to the Queens, more, lots more I hope, we can get to soon, I wanted to add this quote manumitted from Myth of The Ant Queen by Steven Johnson, from a link provided by yourself...

Dig up a colony of harvester ants and you'll almost invariably find that the Queen is missing. To track down the colony's matriarch you'll need to examine the bottom of the hole you've just dug to excavate the colony: you'll find a narrow, almost invisible passageway, that leads another two feet underground to a tiny vestibule burrowed out of the earth.

There you will find the Queen. She will have been secreted there by a handful of ladies-in-waiting at the first sign of disturbance. The passageway, in other words, is an emergency escape hatch, not unlike the fallout shelter buried beneath the West Wing.

Myth of The Ant Queen by Steven Johnson. From the anthology: Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software

Knew they guarded her but this really details their genius or whatever you'd wanna call it.I live in US and the name of the place I live in is "Nature Trail" and that "nature" sometimes wants inside and sets up shop and is invasive.That's when I grab my trusty Terro bait and within 2 weeks they are gone because they bring it to the queen as well as eat it themselves.Works wonders.

reply to post by Xoanon

I read that there're at least a quadrillion ants on the earth.

And there're some 3-6 million cells in the average ant.

There're about seven billion humans. And there're trillions of cells inside us.

My math says then that there're sextillions of human and ant cells on earth.

Not sure if this helps you. But it shows that we're nearly on equal ground, cell per cell.

reply to post by jonnywhite

My math says then that there're sextillions of human and ant cells on earth.

Not sure if this helps you. But it shows that we're nearly on equal ground, cell per cell.

I would have never known this or thought to figure it out. Brilliant post, jonnywhite, thanks for contributing. Somehow, it does make me feel better.



X.

reply to post by KaiserSouszay

give em some Shock and Awe.

You bet I will and have. Right at the moment, though, a 'surgical-strike' is required because I have to make sure there are enough to glom on to the poison gel that I have cleverly stuck on the end of a fork.

The nest that had been entering from the opposite side of the building and trailing along the ceiling and for some reason hanging out in the bathroom is all but dead now and I am going to leave it at that for the night. I am thinking the other large nest should be even more greatly diminished by the morning.

A man can dream.



X.

reply to post by Xoanon
Very well-written OP, had me smiling all the way.

To off-set your conscience - ants aren't sharers, they're like little versions of us. Take, take, take and conquer. Here they are trying to eat all your stuff, sleep in your bed, nest in your clothes and colonise you out of a home. Little SoBs.

Be warned, Intel sources discovered ants have been studying the strategic potential of an Airborne Wing:

Parachuting Blighters
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1d70ba862f88.jpg[/atsimg]

Sobering stuff, I think you'll agree.

Ants in Combat Training
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/ca6ba47249b6.jpg[/atsimg]

A few years ago, I saw a solitary ant in my dad's kitchen and momentarily felt sorry for it....ahem...cough... I put a tiny drop of maple down and was on my way. Couple of days later and he's on the phone totally bemused by long convoys of ants that 'suddenly appeared.' Behind the prickly sweat of shame, I was LMFAO. There's a moral in there...and a testament to idiocy, but we don't need to go over that.

Nope. Ants want the lot and right now.

..... genius.


pure genius.

I'm not fond of ants!
My cat likes to play with them though.

They're related to wasps
Busy little workers that can do a lot of damage.

Is it true ants are quite resistant to a nuclear fallout?
I heard that a long time ago but not sure on the validity of it.

I had a colony of ants trying to get in my home that had wings on them. They weren't flies. In fact I didn't witness them fly, just crawled.

reply to post by Xoanon


they are little buggers arnt theyi cant wait to read this im posting now before i go to bed so i dont forget about it tommarow

You can probably thank the Montauk Project on Long Island for these New Giant-Headed Ants.

Originally posted by Xoanon
That cat won't touch the stuff after the ants have been all over it, I suppose he smells them or something, or is simply disgusted by having seen them on the food.

It's probably because of the pheromones they use to mark the way to the food, that's how a scout finds it's way back and all other ants find their way up to the food again.

One thing I liked to do when in the presence of a trail of ants was to clean the path with my finger and then watch the ants from both sides reaching that spot and getting confused. They would then go to both sides of the trail, trying to find the right track again, and they would rejoin both ends after some minutes.

As I don't have ants where I live (although we had a flying ants invasion some years ago) I cannot make a test to see if ants are as sensitive to it as cockroaches, but one thing that I found that kills cockroaches almost instantaneously is detergent or any product that removes grease, like alcohol.

PS: great thread, I see you are one of the people that follow the "know your enemy" route.

Thoroughly engaging and engrossing thread, I learned things I did not know, and had a laugh which made the information go down smooth.

And what would I tell people? “Oh, those are just the ants, no point in trying to stop them, have a seat.”

Don't give up man! Your on the front line of the species war, they will sense defeat and double their efforts! Ant history will read: "and in those days, there were giants...." Ant skeptics and ant teenagers will scoff.

I used to love to give ant hills pieces of bread when I was a kid. It is fascinating to watch them swarm over food and take little chunks back underground. I felt like I was doing a good deed by feeding this mass of insects so easily.

When I moved to SC I found out what a pain the RIFAs really are. My first encounter was when I was doing sit-ups on a hill after running. I found out very quickly and painfully how it is to actually be that piece of bread I used to feed them. I was doing sit-ups on an ant hill!!

Fast forward 5 years and the wife and I are living in a trailer in SC. We awaken one day to find our ENTIRE kitchen pantry utterly infested with ants. It was horrifying, shocking and amazing all at once. I could not even believe that just 8 hours earlier I had been eating from that same pantry and walking around barefoot in the kitchen. How did they know to wait until I went to sleep and how did they mount such a humongous assault on my food so quickly?

Here's to ants!

reply to post by meticulous



Oh, hell naw.

Long Island is nowhere near far away enough from where I presently sit, but maybe Montauk isn't to blame. This rare bobble-head trait is a genetic quirk that pops up naturally in some ant colonies, and creates a third class of ant. While most nests have soldiers and workers, these lucky Long Island ants also have supersoldiers.

More here: theweek.com...

They remind me a little of the Space Marines from 40K.

But while you might expect to see these guys wielding their giant heads like wrecking balls in the grass blade jungle, it turns out their function is defensive. They block tunnels during enemy ant raids. They're like little bouncers.

Love the ant-rant as I, too, am in the midst of an ant-jihad. I have almost won...until next summer.

Holy crap are these things annoying, I have tiny black ones coming out of the smallest cracks..

So, fess up guys, what poisons have worked for you and what would you recommend to fight?

I know how to get rid of fire ants, I take my turkey fry pot and boil up 3-4 gallons of water, then pour it straight in the middle of any nest I see, but they usually just pop up again ten feet away. Sometimes I think I get the queen, since I never see them in that area again.

Do they parley, and can there be a peace between us?

(NO, NO PEACE)

s&f for such a great, entertaining, well written post! i hope you manage to get rid of the ants. i feel bad for your poor cat!

Great thread, OP.

When the Hopi said we lived with ant people they didn't specify the size of the ant people however, so I wouldn't say they were "tiny" and we were living in tiny ant holes. The cave depictions show the ant people being at around human size or slightly smaller tho. Calling them "ant people" may have just been due to their appearance and similarities with ants (big eyes, identical appearance, underground, robotic and efficient movement), not that they were actual ants.

Native American and ancient texts can't be taken literal. Like when they say wicked people will sit beside ant hills and ask for salvation at the time of judgement. Or how humanity was taken to live with these ant people and saved by them. Neither of those makes sense, or is not physically possible, unless the assumption that they were referring literally to ants is put aside.

You must be my neighbor...(far SoCal).

I too fight these things daily.

We must join forces....Because I am getting my butt kicked.

Every morning is a new surprise.