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Ant Mega-Colony Covers the World
Deag writes "A mega colony of one family of ants has spread all over the world. Previous mega colonies in California, Europe and Japan have been shown to be in fact one global colony.
Ants from the smaller super-colonies were always aggressive to one another. So ants from the west coast of Japan fought their rivals from Kobe, while ants from the European super-colony didn't get on with those from the Iberian colony.
But whenever ants from the main European and Californian super-colonies and those from the largest colony in Japan came into contact, they acted as if they were old friends."
One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
Well, this reporter was...possibly a little hasty earlier and would like to...reaffirm his allegiance to this country and its human president. May not be perfect, but it's still the best government we have. For now.
don't tread on an ant he's done nothing to you
there might come a day
when he's treading on you
you'll end up black and blue
you cut off his head
legs come looking for you
so unplug the jukebox
and do us all a favour
that music's lost its taste
so try another flavour -
antmusic
These overlords must be the ones that have taken over my back yard. Fire, bleach, anti-freeze, roto-tiller, sll no affect. These overlords will rule us all.
I wonder how long it would take for the geographically isolated colonies (who share the same mega-colony ancestry) to drift enough that they lose their association with the parent mega-colony, and cease to treat other sub-colonies as friends.
How much variation in the cuticle hydrocarbons is acceptable? Are there specific 'marker' hydrocarbons that help differentiate between colonies? Genetically, is it a matter of different intron expression, or is it variation within a single intron? How many base pairs are involved if that's the case?
Damn, I knew I shouldn't have coffee this late.
Well, I'm off to plunder the depths of the internet in hopes of learning more about ant colony differentiation. Adieu!
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
... I've seen this movie. It was about 20 years ago. All I can say is - we're in a LOT of trouble guys.
BTW if any of you are currently working in a research facility in the middle of the desert, I'd advise you to get out now.
#DeleteChrome
In the case of Argentine ants, boric acid powder (cheap at the hw store) plus syrup has worked fairly well for me.
Sometimes they want fat instead of sugar, use peanut butter instead of syrup. Don't overdo the boric acid or they won't bite.
Just goog for recipes.
Interesting article on NYT recently http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/operator-can-you-put-me-through-to-ant-nest-251/?ref=science
I'm perfect in every way, except for my humility.
There's one that always works for me:
boiling water, a whole pot, straight down the hole
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
One supercolony makes it sound like they have organization (of the ant-ish variety) that spans the globe. This is just a bunch of small colonies whose scents are so similar that members of the other colonies are unable to discern that they are, in fact, not from their own colony.
Some see the vessel as half full; others see it as half-empty; We pour it out on the floor and laugh
Just want to remind everyone, that when the ant revolution does come, that Oxyclean(tm) DOES in fact kill ants.
Them!
Sig this!
When they saw the breadth of their domain, they wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.
I don't think PETA will be happy with that - can't you just ask them nicely to go away ?
This is very bad news for Hopper and the rest of his gang.
-David
That's alright. Here in the South we have our fire ants (Solenopsis invicta) to defend us.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Have you tried playing Slim Whitman songs to them?
the mole with the hair on the cheek, the kiss on the nose with the bad breath, the completely lame christmas presents, the drunk hysterical laughter at the adult table
everywhere, everywhere on the globe
(shudder)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I had these ants in my old house. Seal up one path and they find another. Put a pesticide on the baseboards and they run across the ceiling. The liquid ant bait/poison kills them, but they keep coming. I used a whole lot of the stuff and there was a 1/4" layer of dead ants in the room and they kept coming. It turns out that the anthills are all connected and they will even add a local hill if they find something that seems like a good source of food.
I finally sold the house.... Sucker!!
I remember seeing this on the Discovery channel a few years ago, it was really cool seeing how these ants recognized one another as family and acted as such. On the other hand they were extremely violent to ants of different colonies and if I remember right the Discovery channel's pitch was that they are bent on world domination (of ants).
Some years back (1952), Clifford Simak wrote a book that, among other things, described the earth as being overrun by ants. I'm not sure if it's in print any more, but you may be able to find it in a used book store. Well worth a read.
Oh, the name of the book is "City".
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
It's clean, dries up disinfects AND kills ants on contact within seconds. It's also cheap. Trust me...it works.
There's one that always works for me: boiling water, a whole pot, straight down the hole
If you pour molten aluminum down the hole you can get rid of the ants and get a keen casting of the whole nest. You could keep it as a trophy like a stuffed moose head.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
The Evil Ant Overlords have positioned themselves to strike in a similar manner to the way that the aliens in Independence Day 4 did. Note that it's July 1st with the strike coming July 4th, the traditional day for alien attacks due to the large demographic in the USA being drunk. Run for the hills... oh, they are full of ants... don't run for the hills... run for the city... oh, they are full of ants.... sigh.... raid! raid! raid! run to Wallmart and buy all the Raid!!!
I've tried that, but they keep bugging me about killing the ants...
Two men claimed to have walked into a bar. Only one had the bruises to prove it.
Nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Here in Massachusetts they're so common and they're pretty much the first ant I ever saw in my back yard as a child in the 70's that I figured they were native.(They're all over the place. Hell, I only found out they're an invasive species last year. That's how completely settled in these little guys are.) Also unlike fire ants they don't bite but man do they breed like crazy.(I know I should get rid of them from my yard but most of the time they don't actually do anything to annoy me. When I see them it's pretty much "Who cares?" which is not my response when I see carpenter ants or yellow jackets.) They're definitely doing something right.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
...signed up for the Mobile Infantry! Service Guarantees Citizenship!
Klendathu delenda est!
Would you like to know more?
---- Liquid was a patriot ----
A mega-colony of ants...now imagine if all the uncles joined them...
*Ducks all the flying objects headed his way*
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Do they communicate philoticly?
"Come and go mad" could get nicely updated in the light of this discovery.
I still remember a story about this, so vividly, from when I was a kid. I must have seen the movie too, whatever.
The point is that the ants are just waiting until we can't fire up the moats anymore. As soon as you give up your SUV, with it's 35 gallon gas tank, you are toast (not the ants)!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Oh, you've got it backwards. Ask the ants nicely, and pour the boiling water down the PETA hole.
Well, then get a bigger pot of water and find PETA's hive.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Mod Parent +10 Awesomeness.
having just been in dc last week, that's exactly what i thought; the national museum of natural history has one or two on display, with comments to the effect that yup, killed the ants.
I have tried something similar with hornets nests. It failed miserably.
How do you get the molten aluminum to keep from freezing in the tunnels and blocking the penetration of the rest of the aluminum?
How do you get it to flow up the tunnels that ascend from intersections?
Inquiring minds want to know. (And evil minds want to apply your techniques to subway tunnels.)
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
As Bill Bailey said, we're human slaves in an Insect Nation (AHAAAAAHAAAAAAA!)
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
... at least according to Fredric Brown's Sci-Fi short story, "Come and Go Mad". This story is about a man, "Nappy", living in modern times. He once believed he was Napoleon, but has been cured of this belief when the story starts. Through a series of eerie events we discover he really is Napoleon. He has been body-swapped by red and black ants who have secretly controled all of human activity and are the true rulers of our world.
Sufficient pressure and flow rate. I would suggest using some termites to construct a small riser above your ant hole, so you get some pressure build up. Don't forget to heat your aluminum to it pouring temperature (~1380 F) rather than it's melting temperature. The decreased viscosity increases flow rate (compare pouring molasses and water down funnels) and well as allowing the aluminum to travel further before solidifying.
Worldwide!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
what a coincidence, I too once was in D.C. in a big marble building and had the same thought about pouring molten aluminum into obnoxious holes atop caverns festering with evil and spewing forth pestilence. Those weren't ant holes, but a pair of a-holes.
make it hot, dig out a cone above the ant hole to act as a funnel, pour it fast.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Have you tried concrete?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQERRbU23bU
I always ask PETA nicely to go away. But just in case, I also keep the boiling pot ready.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Shameless rip from Wikipedia:
Golgafrincham is a red semi-desert planet that is home of the Great Circling Poets of Arium and a species of particularly inspiring lichen. Its people decided it was time to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population, and so the descendants of the Circling Poets concocted a story that their planet would shortly be destroyed in a great catastrophe. (It was apparently under threat from a "mutant star goat"). The useless third of the population (consisting of hairdressers, tired TV producers*, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, management consultants, telephone sanitizers and the like) were packed into the B-Ark, one of three giant Ark spaceships, and told that everyone else would follow shortly in the other two. The other two thirds of the population, of course, did not follow and "led full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Places_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
Exception Duck - may or may not contain chicken.
We had a problem with earth wasps, which were settled below some bush.
I finally cut a 10cm hole in a piece of wood, put thin wires in two (perpendicular) layers over it, and then with two elkos and two diodes got about 600V with 1Ws on them ...
The first few wasps got lighted in the middle, and when the others tried to help they got roasted, too.
After a few minutes I turned the power off, shook the board over a bucket until it's clean again, and put it back.
Two hours later the wasps used another hole to take their eggs somewhere else.
You can kill all the ants in a few ways
a) Follow them back to find the colony. Boil 4-8 gallons of water i a big stock pot, kick the top off of the ant hill, and dump it down. The boiling water will rapidly travel along all of the tunnels and it should reach the queen, taking out the whole colony at once.
b) Bait the places where they enter your house with a liquid borax/sugar mixture. These ant mixtures are available at any store. The ants take the food and bing it back to the colony, where they all eat it - and the borax eventually kills all of them.
When I clicked on this article, I was 99.9% sure that the first comment would welcome ants overlords...
"Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong." (Oscar Wilde)
IIRC, was the title of a sci-fi short story I read long ago. Though bringing it up in this thread just spoiled it for everyone who hadn't read it yet.
I tried boiling water. It worked for the immediate vicinity of the hole but didn't extend to killing a large proportion. I also tried methylated spirits ... pour it down and then set fire to it. Worked OK, but the liquid in the hole thing seems flawed, perhaps it could be injected as a vapour. Fire is more fun.
Maybe a gas burner could be used to fill the nest with propane and then light it off at an exit hole? Not sure if this might be a little dangerous, YMMV.
On a similar note, hydrogen peroxide at 50% concentration does the trick nicely. Heats to super-hot steam on contact with the dirt, and bakes the colony from the inside out. I've occasionally seen plumes of steam erupt from other places in the yard. Rarely takes more than one treatment a year and costs less than gasoline if purchased in reasonable quantities. -Hope
These overlords must be the ones that have taken over my back yard. Fire, bleach, anti-freeze, roto-tiller, sll no affect. These overlords will rule us all.
You didn't specify what kind of bleach or at what concentration. I bet hydrogen peroxide in fairly high concentration would finish them off.
Time to get to lizard breath and get the 5 bits of evidence we need to call in the national guard .
Watch out round there the Hell cats are a nasty bunch
At least when the ants do 'get you' you wake up to a pretty nurse.
That's because the meetings are held in California, the California ants know where the medical marijuana is grown, and hold the meetings at the Grateful Dead ranch. Peace brother.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
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I lived for a time in a poor town in Israel, doing volunteer work with Russian immigrants in the local schools. The floors of my apartment building were made by laying tile (with no grout) atop compacted sand. Messy roommates = ant colonies under the entire floor of the housein the sand, building indoor anthills at junctions of 4 tiles. Mopping with boiling water every other day did very, very little to deter their enthusiasm.
I for one welcome our new Argentinian Ant overlords!
Obligatory fulfilled.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
The article talks about how ants from different super colonies in the same region react aggressively to each other and how ants from the largest super colonies on separate continents react as if they are from the same colony. What it doesn't mention is the reaction of ants from the largest super colony in California to ants from the smaller super colony in Japan (or the smaller super colony in Europe). If ants of this species from California get along with ants from either of the colonies in Europe or Japan, then this interaction is much more complicated than the article reports. The only way the scientists conclusion is supported is if the ants from California get a similar reaction from ants from the smaller colonies as the ants from the larger colony in the region do.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Those weren't ant holes, but a pair of a-holes.
you only managed to find two?
Find the cure a Bing.com.
Your post is the second link on the resuls page :)
Mmmm.. Donuts
So the Ants are globalizing as well ... do you think they same the same things about us we say about them? "Damn humans- they're taking over the planet! I've tried to get rid of them but they're so persistent!"
... SAY the same things about us ...
Wanna know where Gene Roddenberry got his inspiration for the Borg? Look no further than the Argentine ants in California. These critters ARE the Borg. They won't need to build spaceships to own the stars... we'll build them and they'll stow away on them. Next stop, the Gamma Quadrant.
Where I come from, ants make hills not holes.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Where do you get 50% H2O2 from? The highest I can find is 35% and I'd have to send away for that.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Since the oxygen in the tunnels is rather limited I'd think fire wouldn't go too far.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
I for one welcome our supercolonized borg ant overlords.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I know you're joking but, being an ex-patternmaker and working for a foundry, I can tell you this:
You need to add runners and risers to the nest before pouring. The runners will feed the metal into the correct holes and the risers will store heat allowing the metal to flow without freezing too quickly. You also have to remember that the metal will freeze quicker on the outside of the tubes, leaving the middle potions free to flow. High yields aren't an option with too many runners though - it's a Fettler's nightmare too.
Yay! 4 years training, and 4 years practicing, just to explain this on Slashdot!
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
If not for wars, we'd probably still be in the Stone Age.
Duct tape? Commissioned by the military. Jet planes? First made by the Luftwaffe. Electronic computers? First made for codebreaking. Nuclear energy? Manhattan project. First man in space? Cold War. The Internet.
Like it or not, wars have driven at least a significant portion of technological advancement. Ironic that you're complaining on a computer, over the Internet.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
You know what's awesome about slashdot? That I could laugh at this post ... before I clicked the story.
That's the great thing about the Standard Joke Set: Jokes from the Standard Joke Set can be used and enjoyed with minimal related context, and only the simplest of introductions. Because the audience already knows and likes the joke, jokes from the Standard Joke Set never fail to amuse.
Of course, using Standard Jokes in this way is somewhat suboptimal from a bandwidth utilization standpoint. The joke is shared knowledge, so really all that is needed is some unique way of identifying the joke. One method coming into common use is to simply use the order of the jokes on the Standard Joke List as a numeric identifier. The grandparent post, for instance, could be more optimally represented as simply "#24!" - though unfortunately this compact representation would be disallowed by Slashdot's post filters. (These obsolete rules are therefore in need of revision. As a provisional measure it may be worth introducing the SJS into the "gzip" compression algorithm as globally recognized patterns - that way, the site can stream out a gzip-compressed version of the page and network traffic, at least, will be optimized.)
It's important to note, however, that the Standard Joke Set is no substitute for being funny. You can't just say "#18!" and expect people to laugh. You need to know how to tell it right.
(This concludes my presentation of standardized joke #303. You may commence laughter at your convenience.)
Bow-ties are cool.
Well, don't forget, the expression (ant.weight *) evaluates to a function which multiplies things by ant.weight. So ((ant.weight *) (50 + ant_comfort_factor)) is still a valid way of expressing the same basic computation.
Bow-ties are cool.
Arm children in the areas with the most problem with magnifying glasses. Battle commences on all sunny days.
Problem solved.
You're actually reinforcing Absolut's point. Why should we need war to develop all that cool stuff? Why can't we fund their development on their own merits, rather than as an avenue for killing more people?
Because we're dumber than ants.
And the jet engine was actually patented first in England, almost ten years before WW2 began. The Germans were the first to put it into a production aircraft.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Oh just wait, they'll start fighting too... just give them the time to go through their natural resources without anywhere left to spread to (and it seems they are approaching that point). Unless of course they hitch a ride to Mars and have it terraformed before we do, then I'll agree with you.
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
On the contrary, wars and competition have fueled human innovation. The need to become more technologically advanced than the country next door fueled science for much of history. Religion (which I personally don't like) helped inspire early mathematics and physics, as astronomy was the the root of much early mathematics (here, religion played the role of the false hypothesis that was proved wrong by rigorous inquiry).
But as much as war sucks, the drive to dominate through war has probably speeded up human development. The Chinese considered themselves as the Middle Kingdom, with only culturally and scientifically inferior countries surrounding them. They invented gunpowder and the trebuchet, and used them as toys as entertainment, for what need did they have to go on conquering inferior kingdoms? Noone to fear, and thus no pressing need to invest resources into perfecting new weapons to upset the status quo. Once the Arabs got a look at these Chinese toys, they figured out fairly quickly they could be used to knock walls down. Once they started tinkering around and knocking walls down, the Europeans had to figure out how to A) build better walls B) knock walls down better.
On the other hand, Europe and the Arab world were constantly in an arms race. The Renaissance may not have occurred had the fall of Constantinople not kicked all those Greek scholars out of (former) Byzantium. DARPA wouldn't have gotten the funding needed for the internet without the Cold War; indeed, space exploration was initially a pissing contest between the US and USSR.
ants hate soap. if you make a solution of dish detergent and water and spread the liquid across an ant trail, even just a damp paper towel's worth, they will not cross it.
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Oh no! Sounds like ant globalizaton..
The "H-Word" has died for me.
You're right, I need propane-oxygen, like a cutting torch; or maybe oxy-acetylene?
I'd think it would be difficult to keep the oxygen and fuel mixed sufficiently due to different densities, or to make sure the fuel spreads through the tunnels evenly.
All in all, I think trying to light a fire underground is just a little too much effort to be worthwhile.
Anyone can "stand up for what they believe", but it takes a very brave individual to change what they believe. - Loundry
The mixture doesn't need to remain for long, nor am i bothered about penetrating more than a metre or so into the nest. 95% destruction will be fine. If I had the money I'd be out buying a cutting torch and some large sheets of glass to make an ant farm with - the proof of the pudding and all that.
Nuke them from orbit then?
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Isn't H2O2 on Homeland inSecurity's shit list above a certain percentage? I believe it is used in the manufacture of TATP, hence the concern.
See my journal, I write things there