Ant Farm PC

secolactico writes "This has got to be the coolest case mod I've come across. An ant farm in your PC case. Too bad there are no pics of the case actually on a working PC. It'd be interesting to observe the effect that the temperature and vibration of an operating PC would have on the ants."

Comments

idea

[adamruck]

s/ants/fish/

then you have a cool case

I preferred these

[shut_up_man]

Stained glass case mod (by a hemophiliac too, that's just crazy)
Fish tank case mod (with genuine Neon Tetras)

Ants?

[Cyno01]

This may not be the best idea, i was watching something on the discovery channel the other day about fire ants. It was talking about all the damage they've caused across the south because they're atracted to electrical fields. They short out computers, traffic lights, appliances, and make hell for the linemen because they ussually nest under high voltage lines. They had a bunch on a live pc board, and they just swarmed over certain components, the ones i'm assuming that had strong em fields. This may be just fire ants though, i have no idea.

Re:Ants?

[el-spectre]

My father is an electrical inspector... he says that lots of the controllers (for traffic lights) are infested with ants, you have to open the box and spray it with compressed air before you stick your hand in.

Also fun are the black widows...

Hex?

[ackthpt]

This puts me in mind of the computer in Pterry Pratchett's books, Hex. It's effectively a colony of ants which move things about, thus performing operations, calculations, etc. often of a thaumatical nature. There's a sign mentioned in one of the books, "Ant Hill Inside"

Hammerhead Sharks & Electric Fields

[handy_vandal]

Hammerhead sharks can detect subtle electric fields -- the "hammers" are actually sensor arrays, which the sharks use to find the bioelectric signature of prey animals buried in the mud. The sharks also follow geo-electric paths to feeding grounds.

Mir space station..

[SystematicPsycho]

I used to have a pentium 133 that had a huntsman spider living inside. It didn't bother me so I didn't bother it, they're not dangerous.

This computer was so bad that when I booted it I had to manually kickstart the fan to start spinning by tapping it a bit, kind of like how they used to spin those propellors on airplanes to start them up.

Anyway, I thought "MIR" was tha appropriate name to give to this poor sod. It was decommisioned around a year ago.

Spiders and lizards and fuzzies, oh my!

[ChaoticCoyote]

I've found all sorts of strange critters living in my systems. Back about ten years ago, I opened a 386 to find a Black Widow merrily tending her egg sacks in a web built around the power supply. I had a system offline for a couple of months; When I started it up last week, I heard something inside. Upon examination, I found an anole (small lizard) inside the case. Those dang things get in everywhere... they even move in with my Uromastyx sometimes. Must think he's their big brother or something. But I can't see building a specific house for ants in my computer. After all, I live in Florida, and wage war against fire ants almost daily...

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Ants are attracted to electricity

[Stonent1]

Ask any air conditioner repairman. The ants get stuck inside the relays and cause the relay to fail. Sometimes they eat the insulation of the wiring, cause it to short and trip the breaker. So don't be suprised if your power supply starts smoking one day.

Re:Fried ants..

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess the vibration would kill the ants -- years ago, I had an alligator lizard for a pet. It ate crickets. I would buy crickets by the box (of 100 or 200) and feed them to him periodically. I learned early (and more than once, unfortunately) that leaving a box or cup of crickets on a noisy PC case will kill them in a few hours. :-(

-- TTK

Biological display unit?

[kinnell]

Does that mean it would be possible to manipulate them using electric fields? You could put a backplate on the ant farm with a matrix of electrodes. The ants would be attracted to the ones which were switched on. You could control it from a parallel port to have an ascii display composed of swarming ants. Not only would this be a cool hack, it would completely creep out anyone who saw it in action. IANAB - does anyone know if this would work?

EM rather than heat

[UnixRevolution]

I think the electromagnetic field rather than the heat, noise, or vibration would be the worst for the ants. (yes, i know heat is a form of EM radiation, just bear with me :P) Ants are known to infest stuff like transformer boxes and stuff because they're lured by the EM field. I imagine the EM field generated by case fan motors/circuit boards/procs/drives/PS would have a similar effect, I.E. drive the ants insane. I remember Another Story where someone's iBook (like mine) got infested with ants. They must have been attracted by the EM.