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

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

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

i fukkin love ants

had a colony of carpenter ants that live I guess somewhere outside, have some sort of crisis last week and try to migrate wholly across my kitchen. hundreds of them. carrying wee eggs

I did my best to not gently caress with them but they fanned out everywhere and I ended up sort of slow genociding them throughout the day. it was not great

one of the best pics I ever took with my macro lens is a weaver ant

# ¿ Jul 17, 2020 23:02

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 16:46

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

Sharks Eat Bear posted:

Non sequitur but one year for Christmas I bought my dad a copy of The Ants by EO Wilson. It’s a massive tome with great color photos throughout, and I really thought he would be surprised and delighted given his hobbyist passion for biology and insects in particular. But he almost winced when he opened it; apparently the passion does not extend to ants. He kept the book but I don’t think he ever read it :/

My girlfriend at the time bought me The Superorganism for Christmas like ten years ago

She's my wife now

# ¿ Jul 19, 2020 00:08

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

Goons Are Great posted:

Tropical worker ants by a vast majority, estimated 70 to 90%, don't die while hunting or to diseases or whatever, but due to dying either by termites or by another ant. The termites fight among each other and so do the ants and they all fight literally endless wars against each other. Ant species in those areas are usually very polygynious to be able to keep up with the massive amount of eggs a termite queen can lay (up to 50 000 per day) and they often form enormous supercolonies to be able to stand a chance. The wars against termites take months or years and once over on one front, they keep fighting on another just a few meters further away.

They have done this for around 200 million years now and show no intention to ever stop until either the family of ants or the order of termites (which are as noted before not at all related to each other in any way) have won. Well, and then they'll keep on waging war against each other anyways.

This rules so fuckin much nature is the coolest

# ¿ Jul 24, 2020 23:31

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

Goons Are Great posted:

Ah yes, I have a big post about it here, but the short version is this:
Some ant species, called harvester ants, which are the genera Messor, Pheidole and Pogonomyrmex don't do the regular sweet stuff/insect business, but instead bake some actual bread, called simply ant bread. They do this because it solves two problems at once, being the potential lack of feeding insects and honeydew or other sources of energy, and the problem of storing food.

Those ants wander around and look for seeds to collect and harvest them, the kind of seeds doesn't matter too much, they accept wheat as well as flower seeds.
They take those seeds, carry them to their nest, remove the skin if it has any and sort them based on what plants they come from. Then they store them in fortified underground granaries, which never go below or above a certain point of temperature due to the way it's constructed as well as the ants bringing in heat from the sun (hot rocks etc) or cool water from outside. The seeds get licked by specific granary worker ants which prevents the seed from germinating even if the condition would be good for them to keep them fresh for months or even years,throughout monsoon as well as drought.

Then there are specific baker ants, which have enlarged mandibles and a special set of mouth parts, with which they can take the seeds and crush them, moving them into their mouths and mixing the resulting flour with saliva. Then they chew on this dough for many hours, filling it with enzymes that open up the proteins and carbohydrates, vitamins etc. in the dough.
Once done they put it together into gray or white balls that get shared around the colony to feed them, that's the ant bread. Species who do this usually eat almost or entirely nothing else but that, it's really cool.

They also often lose a certain procentage of seeds along the way, which helps plants to grow elsewhere. Similar to how squirrels spread plants, but in a much bigger scale but a smaller area.

# ¿ Jul 27, 2020 20:50

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

Omigosh I went to move a tomato pot today and underneath was like a hundred ants with queen and eggs

I put the pot down carefully, I'm assuming they are living in the dirt inside the pot, maybe they used the hollow underneath it as a large like, prebuilt chamber? I dunno but I'll check tomorrow to make sure they're ok. Been having bad ant luck this summer

# ¿ Aug 2, 2020 01:34

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 16:46

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

ants are so fukkin cool

# ¿ Aug 19, 2020 23:47

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