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It is NUPTIAL FLIGHT SEASON people!! If you live in Europe it probably already happened (here in western Germany it started over the past few days) or will happen in the next few days, in the US depending on where you are it also will start in the next few weeks! East coast is probably already there or will be soon, so go out and watch some tiny birds!! If you look on the ground on any regular street, you might notice suspiciously big bugs crawling around, relatively long and sometimes with or without wings. If that's the case, you might be looking at a freshly hosed ant queen! Chances are good, because colonies in a given area synchronize their nuptial flights and thus there tend to be millions and millions of them everywhere. They look exactly like ants, but are usually up to thrice the size you would expect from that species and what makes them obvious in comparison to other insects you might see these days is that they tend to be abnormally long, due to their ovaries getting bigger and bigger. If you do see one and she lost her wings already, that means that she has very recently had a very sexy time with any number between 8 to 22 males and is now extremely satisfied and loaded with mixed ant sperm in a special organ she has just to store it and keep it happy and alive for years, called spermatheca. If you see one with wings still attached, it means that she either has not broken those off yet after sex, or she is still unfucked and in search for a male. You should leave her be if so, sometimes they might get lucky and find their Romeo even when arriving late to the party. If you wish to get into ant keeping, now is the time! You can safely collect a wingless, pregnant queen carefully and offer her a home to get started on baby production. You can release them back into the wild later on and just having has a small little family to live with your for a few months, or expand into an actual setup. Either way, please do not crush those little ladies on purpose! It is the most dangerous and most difficult time of their lives, they had to fly for miles and miles without ever having practiced before, deal with the relatively violent procreation traditions involved and most of them will not make it as it is already. No ant queen is in any way aggressive, dangerous, poisonous or anything, they never possess a sting or a venom sprayer and their mandibles are even too weak to properly bite. Even if you have other insects around, no worries, they are as peaceful as they could be!
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Jun 23, 2022 11:24
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I didn't go on ant collecting spree this year, but I found pictures from my last endeavor! The safest and easiest thing is to use a test tube, some cotton wool and some water. That's all they need, no food necessary.  Those were three ladies I picked up right in front of my door. Later on one of them showed themselves proudly  I kept all three for about four months at home, they do not eat or run around at all, so all they need is a tiny little amount of space, access to water and darkness. The red foil exists because ants are unable to see the color red and so it appears dark to them, while allowing a bit of insight for the human. All three of them successfully hatched their babies and as soon as the first baby came out, they needed to look for food, so that was the time for me to decide whether to keep them or not. Back then I decided to not keep them and placed all three of them in the wild, in safe distance to each other, dropped some honey nearby to get them started and that was it. That was two years ago and while two of those new colonies moved away so if don't know how they are doing, one of them is actually living next door to this day. She gave birth to a lot of babies and survived two winters already, chances are her colony will continue to grow for years to come and I am excited for that.
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Jun 23, 2022 11:43
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Saw bunch of winged ants doing the nuptial flights up in the PNW hiking around a lake in the cascades today and thought of this thread.
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Jun 25, 2022 07:21
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Hell yeah!! Everyone is welcome to post some pictures if you get a chance, I love to see those little buggers!
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Jun 25, 2022 12:32
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No alates in Denmark yet, wtf? Also I haven't found any cheap red plexiglass for my nest project, so maybe it's good. The garden ant population is pretty active though, they're undermining my greenhouse pretty badly. Like a couple of liters of sand and gravel dug out over a couple of weeks, probably by two colonies.
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Jun 26, 2022 08:02
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it was so warm lately in Europe, so that's most likely why so many nuptial flights happened. It's not too weird if they have not yet started in Denmark, might make to mid July before it goes off. Also it is quite funny to me to think that there are ant colonies trying to cause a cave in of your greenhouse, that's so typical ant
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Jun 26, 2022 11:39
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I'm honestly impressed with these guys, have some super boring pictures of the most boring part of my garden (I'm also trying to make it a cool place for bees and assorted other exoskeletal friends). Number one: a few weeks worth of dirt dug up by ants, after sweeping:  Number two: status the day after said sweeping, colony alpha. My wife, who is less anthusiastic, bought some stuff which is supposed to clog up their tunnels to encourage them to leave. They are giving zero fucks.  Number three and four: colony beta in the greenhouse on the same day, and a step outside with activity.   I've also found the little asslickers farming aphids on a bunch of plants, but no pictures sadly.
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Jun 26, 2022 19:31
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Awww amazing, especially the asslicking is so much fun! Even though it might anger your wife, I do hope they can continue to prosper and there is a peaceful coexistence on the way
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Jun 26, 2022 23:46
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The carpenter ants in my cricket pens especially give zero fucks. It's actually kinda interesting in a control-group kind of way. These ants will actually *fight me* for cricket legs that I accidentily left on the table in a tiny high stakes game of tug of war. While the workers in my captive carpenter ant outworld will panic and throw a fit whenever I lift the lid to feed them. The ones in the cricket pen don't care and will only move if directly disturbed.
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Jun 26, 2022 23:58
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Dropping the question in here instead of Discord: I watched Ant-Man last week and enjoyed it as a silly heist movie. But I couldn't help but wonder about the ants and how accurate they were to real life. I do know I was annoyed at Scott for being all "I am tiny and in their nest, clearly they're coming over to say hi to me AAAAA NO THEY'RE NOT" like dude. dude you smell like something to investigate and probably remove from the colony. Dude do you know nothing about ants.
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Jul 17, 2022 14:29
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The flying ants Scott rides probably aren't very realistic, while reproductives will fly for their mating flights its a very short affair; I would assume they wouldn't have the endurance for the acrobatics and long distance flights. I could be wrong though. They also aren't like piranas like in that one episode of what if, although maybe solenopsis geminata might strip a human corpse to the bone (I've seen videos of them going whole hog on dead turkey/mice/tarantulas/lizards/etc) but it would take a large colony a long time, several days probably. You probably couldn't do it with just the virgin reproductives.
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Jul 17, 2022 16:59
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Yeah pretty much, the flying ants obviously would never do that, but ok I know he's doing some technology magic yada yada to make it happen. Still, while male ants and queens can fly, no ant of any species is particularly good at flying. Why would they? Males fly exactly once and die due to the violent process of mating and they probably are the only ants that even get the chance to fly for extended periods of time (like, a few hours, maybe), while queens also fly exactly once during their lifetime, mate with a bunch of guys and then break off their wings and consume their own wing muscles to feed their children. In fact, especially young queens leaving their nest for nuptial flights, are notorious for being bad at flying. The first few attempts of queens taking off have a devastating rate of queen ants crashing into something, falling down, be crushed by something, get eaten by a predator or drown in the pool of water you thought was solid ground. During a nuptial flight, it is highly optimistic to assume that even 50% of the queens leaving the nest via flight ever get to mate with a male, as they usually die long before reaching the mating spot due to being bad at flying. They do have an impressive endurance, some species can travel dozens of kilometers for the mating ground, but only because nuptial flights of all kinds exclusively happen when the weather is beyond perfect. They wait weeks, even months for the right weather conditions (no wind, no rain, very warm, no risk of weather turning bad for at least 12 to 20 hours) before even taking off. Also, they take a perfectly straight route if possible, do not fly around mountains or anything and try to basically just move forward as much as possible. As such, assuming they are agile flyers is entirely unrealistic, ants do neither have the muscles, nor the wings, nor the experience - as mentioned, alates only use their wings exactly once in their life - nor the eyes or other forms of senses to do so. You also have to add that by far most flying insects are surprisingly bad at flying, there is only a handful of insect groups that really got that one covered and only due to massive adaptations for that. Like flies, who even changed their wings entirely to be able to, you know, fly. Other things shown in the movies are not entirely unrealistic, like ants building very efficient roads to accomplish a task (that they do because he somehow mentally told them to or whatever), of course they are not capable of telepathy or something, they just use pheromones and a very efficient process called stigmergy to make it happen. I think I have written down some details on that ITT somewhere, too. Bottom line is, they require time to do it, simply because thats how coordination works for ants. I think the biggest thing from the concept of the ant man is the entire premise, though. As far as I am aware, correct me if I'm wrong this is truly not my area of expertise, ant man got to be some sort of superhero because he is able to shrink down in size and have the strength of an ant and thus do superhuman stuff. Sure growing and shrinking in size is very useful and superhero-y but it is a very common misconception to assume that ants are super strong. The idea of ants being strong comes from people assuming that the strength of a muscle grows linearly with its mass. An ant that weighs 10mg may be able to lift a 1g leaf, but that does not translate to a 100kg ant being able to lift 10000kg. The mass of an organism grows by the power of three, while the mass of the cross section of a muscle only grows with the power of two. Take a 10mm long ant and let it grow 200 times, so that it would be 2m long - the mass would grow by 200³, so say 10mg of weight turns into 80kg of weight. The mass of the muscles, which is what matters when it comes to lifting, would grow by 200² - which means the ant that was able to carry the 1g leaf, could now lift 40000g - or 40kg. That's rather normal for most animals. So saying something can carry "x times its own weight" is not a very useful statement to make in biology. I do think they toned down the being able to lift heavy part in the modern movies, though, at least I can't remember ant man running around lifting cars or something. Seems to be more about the shrinking, right? I only just recently even watched the Avengers, so not sure! Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Jul 17, 2022 |
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Jul 17, 2022 18:20
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Technically his power from shrinking due to the Pim Particles is that he is able to preserve his mass while shrinking to proportionally increase his strength. His suit is meant to protect him/provide oxygen because otherwise he is too small to breath. So the idea is you know how its said like a spoonfull of a neutron star would weigh like the entire weight of Mount Everest? It's that idea, he has the mass/density of a full adult male in the size of an ant; so his main thing is being able to be very maneuverable at that size and hard to see/hit while still being able to punch/kick people with the weight/strength of a full adult human strength. Maybe an earlier iteration of the character had something more specific to do with ants or the idea that ants are strong inspired the idea idk. I think Hank Pim (the inventor of the suit/particles) controls the ants using pheromones; mainly because due to SHIELD betraying him he doesn't trust people so he turned to using ants/insects to do tasks for him stealthily while not needing to leave his house due to being watched by SHIELD/HYDRA.
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Jul 17, 2022 19:21
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Ah, I see. Well, in that case that sort of works out! I get it, too, I'd trust my ants with my life, too
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Jul 18, 2022 09:07
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Goons Are Great posted:Ah, I see. Well, in that case that sort of works out! I get it, too, I'd trust my ants with my life, too Honestly it's probably a good idea; if you think about it, research into nanomachines/von neumann probes that self replicate and obey simple instructions ala cellular automata probably is going to begin by trying to genetically engineer ants into a similar sort of workforce.
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Jul 18, 2022 21:24
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Raenir Salazar posted:Honestly it's probably a good idea; if you think about it, research into nanomachines/von neumann probes that self replicate and obey simple instructions ala cellular automata probably is going to begin by trying to genetically engineer ants into a similar sort of workforce. There's a good potboiler SF novel about this exact concept by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I highly recommend it.
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Jul 19, 2022 03:56
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E. Nesbit posted:There's a good potboiler SF novel about this exact concept by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I highly recommend it. Heck its the premise for one of my game projects  I even have concept art which I'm sure I posted here a while back.
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Jul 19, 2022 04:03
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I remember reading some uhh short story or something? or theory? I can't tell, but a small story for sure about ants actually being aliens sent from another lifeform as von-neumann probes right here on earth, as the evidence is right here, it's a self-replicating, well- oiled machine running for at least around 250 million years - more than most other complex life we still encounter today - some of which highly adapted over time, others barely changed, yet still functional! What I'm saying is, bow down to our ant overlords, goons
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Jul 30, 2022 19:00
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Goons Are Great posted:I remember reading some uhh short story or something? or theory? I can't tell, but a small story for sure about ants actually being aliens sent from another lifeform as von-neumann probes right here on earth, as the evidence is right here, it's a self-replicating, well- oiled machine running for at least around 250 million years - more than most other complex life we still encounter today - some of which highly adapted over time, others barely changed, yet still functional! The chosen few of us who take them in and take care of them will be rewarded with a virtual afterlife. 
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Jul 30, 2022 21:14
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Are there any species of ant where the males do anything other than gently caress and die?
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Aug 13, 2022 19:01
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ninjewtsu posted:Are there any species of ant where the males do anything other than gently caress and die? There are some born without mouths.
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Aug 13, 2022 22:16
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ninjewtsu posted:Are there any species of ant where the males do anything other than gently caress and die? Raenir Salazar posted:There are some born without mouths. I sometimes wonder if that's an upgrade for them. However, as implied, no, not for ants. Of course, I can provide you with an overly long nerdy answer to elaborate for no reason, too.  It works as much as it works for bees and wasps and hornets and stuff, too, as well as other related groups of animals, so the assumption (I dont thnk we have evidence on that yet, but might be wrong) is that this property developed in the common ancestors of all hymenoptera and it prevailed to this day. Even in the most primitive ants, bees and so on that we know to date, species that really have barely changed at all over the past 250 million years, we see this phenomenon where males are practically barely more than living bags of DNA. There are sometimes very rare cases where the males live along in the nest for a few weeks before flying off and even rarer sometimes they are allowed to help around the nest here and there, but they never fulfill any actual important tasks and always wither away and die off at some point. Hell, bees even scare their own males off once the time has come or just kill them if they didn't move away when it was their turn to do so. The reason for this is also kinda fascinating, because in contrast to what some documentaries imply, where the males die off naturally after "they have fulfilled their purpose" and stuff - which isn't wrong, but, you know, also really right - simply because there is no practical check if someone has done that. It's not like the males decide to die after they hosed around and then do so, or that there is some magical force that kills them after action X is fulfilled, but it's mostly because the act of spreading semen is incredibly violent. The sperm is sitting inside a male's abdomen and the genitalia apparatus is not exactly user-friendly. It's basically sealed behind a cork if you will and in order to have the ant equivalent of an orgasm, they forcefully have to press until that cork goes boom - ripping apart most of the male's body and leaving them lethally injured. They mate in the air, so usually they fall down already dying as soon as the act is done, sometimes they survive and die later, or just fall prey to whoever finds them afterwards. This is vastly different for other eusocial species, especially termites, who are not hymenoptera at all and in fact closely related to roaches, where males and females live along in the nest and both have a vital role in the colony. Plus the queen lives alongside a king who fucks her on a daily basis to provide fresh semen and DNA all the time. Don't be a man in ant biology if you want to live, is what I'm saying.
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Aug 14, 2022 12:15
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You'd be surprised what at some people are into  Ant-Update News: Sadly my castaneus queen after eating her eggs.  My ant dealer is sending me a replacement which should have brood and some workers so I can skip past the "raising from a single queen" stage which is maybe a little tad too stressful for me. I'll also be getting I think a colony of myrmica rubra which I'll attempt to merge with my existing rubra colony who had been having a bit of a die off; and maybe if they merge with a larger colony they'll do better? I also think maybe their formicarium was too large for them especially post die off and is getting a little dirty. I got some flightless fly culture, I like the idea of using them to feed smaller colonies that might be scared of cricket leg.
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Aug 14, 2022 16:09
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Raenir Salazar posted:
Just an incredible food source in my experience. Extremely easy for almost every carnivorous species to eat, and maintained with a banana every month or so.
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Aug 14, 2022 17:21
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baby fly: "mother, why are we called flies if we cannot fly?" mother fly: "i'll tell you when you're older."
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Aug 14, 2022 20:41
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 One day I caught a spider and tossed it to my ants to nourish them. The spider looked up towards the gods who had tossed them into hell, and muttered "Not today". He struggled and weaved. Through trouble he reaved. Until he came upon their lair, and faced them with his glare. And with a booming voice, yelled out its challenge. And the ants exclaimed their surprise, "For a spider it sure is defiant!"
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Oct 29, 2022 19:38
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If ants are out hunting and the nest is attacked is there any mechanism for recalling them to defend the nest? New information can't travel down the pheromone trails without an ant walking the trail and laying down new pheromone right? In that event does the nest send out ants to pull back the hunting ants, or do they just continue their duties unaware that the nest is in mortal danger until eventually coming back to a dead queen, or is there some other mechanism at play in that scenario?
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Oct 30, 2022 19:12
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Airborne pheromones?
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Oct 30, 2022 19:40
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An ant that senses danger can put out a pheromone that agitated the entire colony into high aggression, but I've never heard of any system where an ant goes out to recruit additional defenders. It's not impossible, but it would involve losing defenders in the critical short term of an attack.
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Oct 30, 2022 20:45
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Oh no they do all of those. Pheromones is where it's at for sure, alarm pheromones as well as "nest under attack come home and defend now" pheromones are the most common thing. However, if ants are further out and can't smell it or the wind is making it harder, there are alarm and scout ants that cover themselves in said alarm pheromones from head to toe and then walk outside and poke any ant they find, recruiting them to defend the nest manually. It's less a thing than it is like for many bees or bumblebees, who tend to actively recruit fighting squads to defend stuff, but it absolutely does happen to make sure everyone is around when an emergency arises. However, most of the time ants do not travel off the nest too far. Even hunting and scouting parties stay in a designated area nearby the nest, so usually they realize there's stuff to defend way before anyone has to call them. Since ants tend to scout and expand their area in a very structured manner and not just "go outside and walk randomly around to find out what's out there", they usually can be called in rather quickly. Like, even if there's a hunting party going out, they walk the path walked before most of the time and always leave behind a "We are this way!!" pheromone trail behind while walking, making sure other ants know where they went. There are even gravedigger ants sometimes, that walk the paths used by those parties before if a squadron does not return, to find and carry back the corpses of the hunters who died on duty, so they can be buried in the ant graveyard. So usually ants have a more or less good idea where the other ants of the nest are.
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Nov 1, 2022 10:55
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drat, ants really are great. How is their scouting/ hunting structured? I'm imagining a kind of orb-weaver web kind of geometric pattern, which covers equal ground in each direction.
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Nov 1, 2022 12:07
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In general they scouting parties made out of two or three ants that from the nest walk in a zigzag in a straight line away from the nest. Once they reached a certain distance, they walk in a circle around the nest while maintaining their zigzag movement, governing a huge area and minimal time until they basically formed a filled circle around the nest, covered in pheromones. From that point on they repeat with a longer distance to further explore their surroundings while covering the entire area. Hunters do a similar thing, but they mostly focus on using the area the scouts have explored and covered in pheromones before. They form hunting parties of five or six ants and also heavily move in zigzag in a rapid succession to cover more area and increase the likelihood of running into prey. Once they found something, they attack and follow it in a straight line to hunt it down and carry it back home once subdued. Medic and gravedigger ants follow those paths to look for corpses or hurt ants and carry them back home or to the next available burial ground to avoid having ants stumble into rotting and therefore potentially dangerous corpses, due to bacteria and diseases feeding from dead matter.
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Nov 1, 2022 14:04
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Thanks! Goddamn ants are fascinating.
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Nov 1, 2022 15:17
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had no idea some ants cared for their wounded.  https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-paramedic-ants-20180216-story.html
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Nov 1, 2022 16:16
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Yeah they do and it's super cool because it's the injured ants are the ones determining whether or not they should get any help. They want to avoid having any ants waste resources and effort on them if they know they're a lost cause and effectively hinder their own rescue, while those ants that still can be of service will make their own rescue as easy as possible. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for the colony even if it's just to make sure no resources get wasted on them, once their fate is sealed.
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Nov 1, 2022 17:00
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How do ants assess threats? Some ant species are blind and even the ones that can see I assume can't do so very well - more for navigation than for determining how large a snail is vs a frog right? Do they throw themselves at food until x number of ants have died without biting into flesh, then retreat to either stay away or bring a bigger hunting party?
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Nov 1, 2022 19:10
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I found this thread and just binged through the whole thing in the last couple of days. Ants are fascinating and I love seeing all your photos. Thanks ant people (thants.) In weird synchronicity it was my nephew's birthday today and his parents got him an ant farm and a test tube of ants. Niger ants apparently - including a queen. He has declared that 'ants are my favouritest animal that I love most' and is very excited to see them develop. I'll admit that I am too - but sadly I'm at the other end of the country so I'll have to be a remote ant great-uncle. Any ideas or recommendations for ant related things for Xmas gifts? He has just turned 5 but reads above that age especially related to animals. I've taken him and his sister (8) out minibeast observing and they're both very gentle and careful with living things.
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Nov 1, 2022 21:29
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Ghouls are Ghastly posted:Yeah they do and it's super cool because it's the injured ants are the ones determining whether or not they should get any help. They want to avoid having any ants waste resources and effort on them if they know they're a lost cause and effectively hinder their own rescue, while those ants that still can be of service will make their own rescue as easy as possible. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for the colony even if it's just to make sure no resources get wasted on them, once their fate is sealed. Grumbles about ants that get stuck in honey  Doubtful Guest posted:I found this thread and just binged through the whole thing in the last couple of days. Ants are fascinating and I love seeing all your photos. Thanks ant people (thants.) Hope he knows that ants need protein and sugar! Based off of my own nephew at around that age I'd assume maybe like ant toys like stuff animals, or maybe a toy of the ant transformer. I think there's also like a recent cgi film for children about a ladybug that gets lost and it befriends an ant colony. I assume the ants he got are Lasius; so they'll be a little on the little side in size; but are otherwise fairly fast growing. I think at this time of year unless they're from the Southern US they might be getting ready to hibernate soon. I have around 4 colonies of the buggers. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 00:21 on Nov 2, 2022 |
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Nov 2, 2022 00:16
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ninjewtsu posted:How do ants assess threats? Some ant species are blind and even the ones that can see I assume can't do so very well - more for navigation than for determining how large a snail is vs a frog right? Do they throw themselves at food until x number of ants have died without biting into flesh, then retreat to either stay away or bring a bigger hunting party? In general, it's a simple trial-and-error situation. For an ant, everything that is not one of your sister ants and not part of the environment, is automatically a threat. A threat is automatically also prey. If it smells different than your sibling ants, you should attack it for so long that it stops moving. That goes for a huge primate hand that's flying around as well as any bug crawling around, even that moist bear nose. If it moves, it's a threat, if you can bite it, it's food. The real question is whether or not they bother hunting and killing a threat, which is mostly limited to what they feel like they can realistically hunt down and eat. That also relies on experience, a bug probably tastes similar to a different bug you ate before, so it seems like that's a suitable source of food. Plus, you can always observe your siblings and look at what they do. 20 ants eating on a thing is probably a good sign that it's good food, so you join them. Most of ant coordination relies on the simple yet genius mechanic of stigmergy, where one successful act leading to a result leads to a higher likelihood of that act being repeated by other individuals. You just do the same thing everyone else is doing and by simple logic and math you will automatically do the right thing over time. There's this biological theory floating around where individual intelligence like we know it for humans is actually not an advantage but a disadvantage in evolution, since it makes processes like that harder to do. We tend to question things we do due to it, but ants have been around for more than 250 million years, multitudes longer than we are, so maybe their idea of structure is superior than ours in that regard!
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Nov 2, 2022 09:51
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Ghouls are Ghastly posted:You just do the same thing everyone else is doing and by simple logic and math you will automatically do the right thing over time. On the basis that the ants doing stupid things probably die and are not available to be copied?
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Nov 2, 2022 11:25
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