Ants!
September 13, 2016 1:20 PM   Subscribe

OMG! My Fire Ants Are Planning an Escape [SLYT]

Bonus hidden antagon video for those who just want to see ants, without all the commentary.
posted by sfenders (37 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Somewhat less dramatic and scary than what I'd hoped for but interesting nonetheless.

Biggest takeaway: there are people that keep ants. For fun.
posted by kinnakeet at 1:43 PM on September 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


Cool video, thanks. I have always loosely wanted to keep ants myself, so I will probably be checking out more of these.

Also, the 420 tag...?
posted by rosswald at 1:47 PM on September 13, 2016


Any videos of ALL CARPENTER ANTS ON EARTH BEING BURNED TO DEATH? I'd watch that with a glass of wine.
posted by davebush at 1:53 PM on September 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Also, the 420 tag...?

It just coincidentally happened to be 4:20 in this time zone, is all.
posted by sfenders at 1:54 PM on September 13, 2016


The population density is pretty alarming to me -- is that normal for ant colonies?

Also I couldn't watch this without itching. #thisishowyougetants
posted by mochapickle at 1:58 PM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


aaah I want to watch this. Later, when I have time. Exciting find!
posted by Going To Maine at 2:00 PM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Neat to see the use of 3D printed parts in the "antagon" (love the name too)!
posted by jzed at 2:03 PM on September 13, 2016


Well, that was an uplifting antidote to this.

(I was rooting for them, but they don't end up escaping, btw)
posted by indubitable at 2:04 PM on September 13, 2016


Not sure that the concept of 'ants contemplating escape' has, so to speak, legs. Higher level reflective cognition isn't really their bag.

A fun video. I think my fear of not noticing an unplugged tube would keep me from this hobby for, oh, my entire life, but it's nice to know that some people are doing this so I don't have to. Even nicer to know they're on a different continent and not, say, the people upstairs. (They have a rescue dog, and that it won't turn into hundreds of thousands of rescue dogs that eat their way through my walls is something of a comfort.)
posted by Devonian at 2:11 PM on September 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


"Where are the red ants?"
posted by BWA at 2:38 PM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Do you want ants? Because [ordering them from an ant company and going to great lengths to maintain a colony] is how you get ants!
posted by zachlipton at 2:52 PM on September 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


Why is no one talking about the fact that these are fire ants? Have none of you ever been bitten by those little bastards? Just looking at all of them gave me nightmares of those terrible hard little pus-filled reminders that fire ants are concentrated evil [link probably NSFL].

I would gladly take ownership of all that tubing and all those ants just so I could elevate one end and slowly pour in gallons of rubbing alcohol until the whole thing was filled top to bottom with little embalmed fire ant corpses.

Christ. Just ... I mean I literally got the shivers while scanning that video muted. Any other ants? We have no quarrel. Fire ants all deserve to die horrible deaths.
posted by komara at 3:01 PM on September 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


Whoa, a little bit of synchronicity: I watched this earlier to day after watching this set of videos about how to find and catch a newly fertilized ant queen and cultivate her into a fully functioning colony.

I've always been pretty fascinated by our formic friends; those videos made me want to start antkeeping.
posted by quite unimportant at 3:04 PM on September 13, 2016


I was distressed that SimAnt is not available on Good Old Games but it appears that The Internet Archive has taken care of it for us instead!
posted by sparklemotion at 3:32 PM on September 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


I've found that having Birds of Paradise in your yard helps maintain active an healthy colonies that try and invade your freezer, leaving 2 inch high piles of frozen ant corpses in the freezer door jam.
posted by The Power Nap at 3:36 PM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would gladly take ownership of all that tubing and all those ants just so I could elevate one end and slowly pour in gallons of rubbing alcohol until the whole thing was filled top to bottom with little embalmed fire ant corpses.

A fun game to play is to take comments from threads about insects and imagine them in threads about dogs
posted by beerperson at 3:58 PM on September 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


My | fireants.


The only way those words should even be together is through walls and walls of concrete and poison.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:02 PM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Them!
posted by vrakatar at 4:12 PM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Every time they look crowded just double their feeding portions and give them some more space!

I wonder how long he'll be able/willing to keep that up.
posted by aubilenon at 4:44 PM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]



I wonder how long he'll be able/willing to keep that up.

A few weeks at a time I suppose. But lower the temperature 2 degrees and cut back on food and it's a problem that solves itself
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 5:18 PM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, he did mention that they get less, um, antsy if you just drop the temperature a bit, without the thousands of deaths from starvation that would result from reducing the amount of food.
posted by indubitable at 5:20 PM on September 13, 2016


"A fun game to play is to take comments from threads about insects and imagine them in threads about dogs"

You bring me a stinging fire dog, I will drown it in alcohol for you. That is my campaign promise.
posted by komara at 5:27 PM on September 13, 2016 [11 favorites]


When the music kicked in playing Carmen, I for a moment started wondering if these were the Bad News Ants.

Not sure that the concept of 'ants contemplating escape' has, so to speak, legs. Higher level reflective cognition isn't really their bag.

One of the things about evolution, in my opinion, is, there is no difference between a higher-level mind figuring out how to do something and a bunch of smaller minds plus biology. Ants have all these biological processes, like scent trails and chemical signals, that essentially express in their environment the same kinds of thought processes that we keep inside our brains and express through language. The difference is we're more general-purpose machines, but really what use would ants have for literature, anyway?
posted by JHarris at 5:48 PM on September 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Fire ants all deserve to die horrible deaths

Late one night in the lab, I was starting to fray at the edges a bit, and I happened to spot a fire ant crawling across the lab bench. In revenge for all the bites I had suffered over the years, I drew up several drops of concentrated formic acid in a pipette and deposited them upon the wretched creature. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:05 PM on September 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Prior to the Game of Thrones stuff, I knew George RR Martin only from his Sandkings novella.

This was like that.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:07 PM on September 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I agree, there's something very Sandkings about the way the author casually drops in some cockroaches to be devoured by the colony at 6 minutes in or so. They seem to be dead, but still...
posted by whir at 7:50 PM on September 13, 2016


You can use an ant colony to de-flesh skeletons, but dermestid beetles will do a better job.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 8:00 PM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Hm. Is there a way to rig a present box of ants so that its interior contents are instantly released in all directions upon op--

NO, NO, I WILL NOT INDULGE THIS IDEA, BETTER NATURE WHERE ARE YOU WHEN I NEED YOU?
posted by JHarris at 9:54 PM on September 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


From the buy ants link above:
To put it simply: If you need ants, we find ant sellers in your area to buy ants from, or if you are looking to sell or donate any of your ant colonies, we help you find buyers from your area wanting ants. We are like the “Uber” for live ants.

Still better than actual Uber.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 9:59 PM on September 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Every time they look crowded just double their feeding portions and give them some more space!

I wonder how long he'll be able/willing to keep that up.


Until the police start knocking on doors in the apartment complex looking for missing people.
posted by boilermonster at 11:29 PM on September 13, 2016


"Not sure that the concept of 'ants contemplating escape' has, so to speak, legs. Higher level reflective cognition isn't really their bag."

Strictly speaking, you're right, of course, although JHarris's point about distributed intelligence is worth contemplating.

But these are fire ants. If you have no experience with fire ants, you just can't know what they are like. Not only do I fully believe these fire ants are planning an escape, I believe they know where you sleep, the names and addresses of all your loved ones, and fully intend to fuck you up and burn your world to the ground, Keyser Söze -like, and entirely out of spite.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:45 AM on September 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


I could swear something is crawling on my leg.
posted by chillmost at 1:01 AM on September 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Blants.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 4:09 AM on September 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


> Neat to see the use of 3D printed parts in the "antagon" (love the name too)!

Look again - it's ALL 3D printed, except for the outworlds. I think the tubing and the view windows are the only exterior items that aren't. The labyrinthine interiors look printed too.
posted by davelog at 7:26 PM on September 14, 2016


I randomly happened upon this while looking up something else on YT and, of course, came here to see if it had been posted, yet. And, yay, it was!

His enthusiasm is so charming. Cheerful ant-bassador! And his music choices made the time go fast (well, that and the speed-up on certain parts).

I think the cockroaches were somehow stunned rather than dead, because they did move a little when he put them in. Seeing how many carapaces he was removing at one point was kind of sobering.

Interested to see what the next space upgrade will be. I admit I was itching to put more form to the pile of tubes in the Antogon.

I've always been interested in ant farms and the like, but I know I could never keep them, so it's cool to me that I can visit someone else's set-up and marvel at all of the work and risk without taking on any of it myself.
posted by batmonkey at 9:12 PM on September 15, 2016


I expected something a bit more in depth. Basically I felt like the video was "Hey, look, ants doing nothing, that's alarming. But look, I add food and space and away they go exploring." I think I would have liked a bit of background / explanation about what triggers this behavior, what the ants could _actually_ do, etc

Also I was happily crunching on raisins when the timelapse of cockroaches being devoured happened. Not a good combination :(
posted by vrittis at 2:55 AM on September 16, 2016


Well, THAT'S enough to give anyone from Texas nightmares. I was so sure it was going to be about how they form a giant stinging ball of death to keep from being drowned in floods, though.
posted by MsMolly at 1:00 PM on September 17, 2016 [1 favorite]


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