A Year in the Life of Wood Ants

Ant writes "This is a radio series perhaps unlike anything you have listened to before! Recorded over a year, the series charts the fascinating and bizarre lives of two colonies of wood ants; one in a pine forest and the other in a deciduous woodland in Northumberland (UK). Using specially designed microphones, we eavesdrop on the private and noisy activities of the ants; we join the soldiers, workers, nurses and guards within nests, following them as they march through the forest on a highway of ant trails, and we are with them when the nest is attacked by badgers, damaged by mountain bikes, and threatened by tree harvesters, dogs, ferocious storms and predatory birds. The series has computer voice effects like you hear in Star Trek (i.e., "Enemy ants defeated.", "Harvester approaching.")"

Comments

Our Home is our world...

[SocialWorm]

"Harvester Approaching"? Sounds more like Homeworld than Star Trek to me.

Sounds great!

[KDan]

Can they do the same with girls?

Daniel

Re:Sounds great!

[mattsucks]

... with an emphasis on the ones that have "gone wild". Domesticated girls are not nearly as fun.

those evil mountain bikes...

[BigChigger]

and wood harvesters should be banned! How dare they!

BC

Only from the BBC

[dflock]

Without even looking at the URL, this could only have been produced at the BBC. One of the few remaining reasons to be proud to be British.

Misrepresentation

[DogBarf]

It's not really that unique. It seems that the ant noise is used only as a background, while folks talk about ant physiology, diet info, etc.

The "computer voice" actually takes away from the documentary, in my opinion.

Re:Misrepresentation

[merriam]

The voice ruins it. I heard it on the radio a week or two ago, and that ridiculous voice compelled me switch it off. It's as if the programme came under the influence of a children's television producer from the 80s.

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Will the Simpsons have gotten it right earlier?

[VikingBerserker]

I can see the transcript now:

"Protect the queen!"

"Which one's the queen?"

"I'm the queen!"

"No you're not!"

"Freedom, horrible horrible freedom!!!!"

update

[BortQ]

I want a SimAnt 2000.

Re:update

[sigep_ohio]

I want SimAnt 2000 too. SimAnt was the first sim game I ever played. I think they could update it and make it pretty sweet. Add some adaptive AI, flashy new graphics, rail guns...oops wrong game.

No .rm here

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know if the clips are available in other than RealMediocre format?

Next on Fox!

[Anonymous Coward]

Next in our line of crappy reality shows, join us for our two series on colonies of wood ants.

One woman, thousands of lovers, who will find the queen's heart? Joe Slave will!

Think the Survivor's have it tough? Try guarding a nest damaged by mountain bikes, threatened by tree harvesters, dogs, ferocious storms and predatory birds!! Watch Guardian: Northumberland (UK).

SimFarm

[jaydho]

Is SimFarm close enough?

defend the queen!

[Hubert_Shrump]

which one of us is the queen?!

Audio links #3-5 are incorrect...

[antdude]

FYI. I think BBC messed up with the recordings. BBC hasn't replied to my e-mail about this error. :(