Ants. Ants! ANTS!! Ants rule everything around me.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ants. Ants! ANTS!! Ants rule everything around me.

Man with Hat: Dec 26, 2007; Open up your Dethday present
It's a box of fucking nothing; Exciting Lemon

Replying to this from the small/stupid questions megathread:

Goons Are Great posted:

Oh I love Formica Rufa, wait, I have this gif of them doing their venom spraying comedy bit, where is it
Here:
https://i.imgur.com/DmoZSn3.mp4

Sadly they are endangered by now due to us tearing down forests, but no worries for stepping on them, it's unlikely your pressure can pop their exoskeleton in soft forest soil and even if so, they have a solidly quick reproduction cycle.
The reason they are very active right now is because of the month, we are very, very close to nuptial flight season. Anytime between today and the next few weeks, they and almost every other ants in the entire country will choose one specific day through a mechanism entirely unknown to fly off to mate with other hands. Hundreds of millions of virgin queens and male ants will fly dozens of kilometers to meet and mate in mid air before the queens start founding their new colonies. This only happens once per year and for temperate regions in Europe, America and Asia, it results in one massive blowup of flying ants. If you live in those areas and you see unusually large and weirdly shaped bugs on the ground then, take a closer look. Chances are it's an ant queen looking for a new home and found a new colony.
The swarm of them mating can be so insanely big that our weather radars sometimes pick them up and believe it's rain.

Anyways, gonna post an ant thread soon!

I actually went from writing the post you respond to here to your BYOB thread to read more about ants and just read the post with that image before seeing this post.

That whole millions of ants on the same day thing is super cool and now I'm gonna go outside and look for flying ant swarms.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 12:23

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 18:32

Man with Hat: Dec 26, 2007; Open up your Dethday present
It's a box of fucking nothing; Exciting Lemon

Man with Hat posted:

That whole millions of ants on the same day thing is super cool and now I'm gonna go outside and look for flying ant swarms.

Saw no flying ants but took some ant pictures!

I saw some ant houses:

This is a small one at the start of my walk.

These two are the same hill from two directions. They found a good spot with cover from the elements!

This one was loving huge and I'm pretty sure goes straight through the roots of that fallen tree. It was hard to get a picture but the whole thing is on another, lower, but much wider rise in the wood floor that was also filled with them. The whole thing must have been like 3 meters in diameter and the constructed anthill was also really big.

https://i.imgur.com/16GTcFQ.mp4
Here are two ants being very helpfil to each other. The third one you can see running away was helping too at first but I guess it was a bad friend and gave up. Rude.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 14:14

Man with Hat: Dec 26, 2007; Open up your Dethday present
It's a box of fucking nothing; Exciting Lemon

Goons Are Great posted:

I have never played SimAnt because that came out before I was born actually, but I did buy Empires of the Undergrowth just five minutes ago after reading about it and seeing a goon talking about what it is, I am very pumped to play it and see if it's cool and whether they are biologically correct! (they are not, because they portray Leafcutter Ants as one species with many castes, which is untrue, it's an entire genus - Atta - and their caste variation internally and externally is way less extreme).
I need to see if my old rear end computer can run it though.

gently caress that noise, find sim ant instead, it's awesome.

# ¿ Jul 2, 2020 19:26

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ants. Ants! ANTS!! Ants rule everything around me.