EuroAnts

April 15, 2002 6:00 PM

EuroAnts Recognizing that free trade and globalization are inevitable, ants in Europe have formed a super-colony. Does their currency have pictures of generic anthills so no colony feels left out?
posted by srboisvert (22 comments total)

According to the article, the homogenization will be their undoing..
posted by Settle at 6:53 PM on April 15, 2002

Another problem with introduced species: the phenomena that results when a previously non-native species is placed into an environment which is suitable for its survival but which contains none of its natural predators or other inhibitors to its expansion. The species spreads to fill the environment, and eventually drives out the natives entirely. South American fire ants and kudzu are examples in America.

Interestingly, the phenomena also explains both American tourists in Europe and "Euro-nights" in American bars.
posted by yhbc at 7:10 PM on April 15, 2002

Is this a parable about microsoft?
posted by mecran01 at 7:19 PM on April 15, 2002

Why do you automatically think of humanity?? This is a story about ants. *Why* must you drag humans into everything? Can't you stop thinking about yourself and think about ants for *one second*?

o<
posted by Settle at 7:40 PM on April 15, 2002

-A supercolony of ants has been discovered stretching thousands of miles from the Italian Riviera along the coastline to northwest Spain.

Shades of R. A. Lafferty. The only way there are thousands of miles there is if there's an undiscovered continent in the Mediterrenean.
posted by rodii at 7:54 PM on April 15, 2002

This CNN graphic is just too funny. I can't wait for more info on this story, it's like a '50s B-movie.

The only way there are thousands of miles there is if there's an undiscovered continent in the Mediterrenean.


rodii-- I respectfully disagree. I think you have failed to take into account that the contours of most coastlines add many miles to their total distance. For instance, depending on who you ask, the State of Maine has between 3500 and 5500 (cached) miles of coastline.
And yes, this does have to do with receding ice at the end of the last ice-age, but even if all of the coastline referenced in the article is fairly even beach I have no trouble believing this figure.

BTW rodii, thanks for mentioning this guy. Too bad he is gone.
posted by anathema at 8:35 PM on April 15, 2002

I'm guessing The Hinges of The World, right?

Also, it brings back memories of grade school in Idaho--we had red ant hives all over the playground and we'd bring shovels on the week end and create Ant Wars. Ah, the cruelty of childhood--well, I never moved past the demonic torture of insects and spiders in mine. I just hope God is not an ant.
posted by y2karl at 8:51 PM on April 15, 2002

There's a supercolony in CA that must surely be bigger (1).
posted by rschram at 9:15 PM on April 15, 2002

this depends totally on the length of the resolution of the measurement of the coastline. They do not plot coastlines using say, 1KM length and then a quarter of that and then find the value it will tend to. A scientist measuring a large ant colony might use a resolution of a hundred metres or so, which would in turn lead to large measurements.

The largest organism in the world, btw, is a single fungus that stretches for a similar distance, similarly.
posted by Settle at 9:36 PM on April 15, 2002

Indeed, Mandelbrot's classic problem introducing fractals was How long is the coastline of Britain?.

What's interesting is that only a couple of years ago, only two supercolonies were known to exist -- on Hokkaido, and in the Swiss Jura mountains.

Not everyone agrees that the term 'supercolony' is appropriate over great distances. And supercolonizing ants are devastating the ecosystems on some Pacific islands; in one incident, "crazy ants" destroyed millions of small land crabs and threaten a native species of booby.
posted by dhartung at 10:50 PM on April 15, 2002

...threaten a native species of booby.

Okay dhartung, I for one had to check.
posted by anathema at 10:59 PM on April 15, 2002

This CNN graphic is just too funny. I can't wait for more info on this story, it's like a '50s B-movie.

Don't joke. All they have to do is destroy our crops and kill our livestock, and we're pretty much screwed.

This will be the first wave of attack in the ant/human wars of 2005.
posted by Neale at 11:12 PM on April 15, 2002

Seems like the right strategy against these particular invaders isn't to bring in natural predators of other species, but rather a greater diversity of argentine ant colonies. Then in competition with each other, they never reach the same critical mass against other species.

Hey, isn't that the strategy behind classical geopolitics as well? Keep your rivals small and fighting amongst themselves?
posted by gojomo at 11:48 PM on April 15, 2002

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:50 PM on April 15, 2002 [3 favorites]

The file is called Super-Ant-Colon.html. Ants with super colons scare me more than ants with big houses.
posted by vbfg at 1:26 AM on April 16, 2002

Don't forget, there's already a second, smaller, supercolony hanging out there too. World War III will be fought on a smaller scale than previously imagined, but it *will* still be fought in Europe.
posted by darukaru at 7:30 AM on April 16, 2002

Amathema's link ends with these interesting tidbits:

Ants have been living on the Earth for at least 100 million years and can be found almost anywhere on the planet.

Scientists say that about 15 percent of the Earth's total biomass _ the combined weight of all living things _ is composed of ants. Another 17 percent is taken up by termites. The combined weight of all ants on earth is more than the weight of all humans.

There are nearly 10,000 known species of ants, but scientists believe there actually may be two or three times this many in existence. Japan has about 260 species of ants, while there are about 700 species of ants in the United States and Canada.

Ants have one of the largest brains of all insects. An ant has about 250,000 brain cells. A human has about 10 billion.

The longest living ants _ wood ant queens _ are known to live more than 20 years. Ants can lift up to 20 times their own body weight. If humans were this strong, a 150-pound person would be able to easily lift a walrus. Ants are not only strong, they are fast. If a person could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could match the pace of a racehorse.

So, basically, they have about 1/2 the lifespan of a pre-industrial revolution human, are 10x stronger, outnumber us by tens of millions to one, and have a combined neural network waaaaay bigger than ours.

We're doomed!
posted by five fresh fish at 9:41 AM on April 16, 2002

This is the scariest thread I've seen.
posted by signal at 10:27 AM on April 16, 2002

Ants can lift up to 20 times their own body weight. If humans were this strong, a 150-pound person would be able to easily lift a walrus.

For the record, this isn't some special super-strength function of ants or even insects; it's merely a consequence of size. The mass of an object is proportional to the cube of its linear size, but the strength is only proportional to the square of its size.

As a thought experiment, say we have a 5'10" human (70 inches) who can lift his own body weight. Now, shrink him to 1/10 his original size--to 7 inches. He now weighs 1/1000 what he did before, but his strength is only reduced by a factor of 100--he can lift 1/100 of his pre-shrunk body weight, which is 10 times his new weight.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:48 AM on April 16, 2002

Now, shrink him to 1/10 his original size--to 7 inches.

THe proportional strength bit is what gave The Atom and his Marvel counterpart Ant-Man their super-hero strength, if I remember correctly. The only thing left to figure out is the actual shrinking, and we'll be equipped to deal with the ants on their terms.
posted by yhbc at 11:03 AM on April 16, 2002

And after that, we'll need to deal with the termites. Nearly 1/5th of the world's biomass?! Freaky.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:08 PM on April 16, 2002

Ants have one of the largest brains of all insects.

Now combine that by the number of ants. They must be thinking up something really, really big.

I swear we're doomed.

Doomed!
posted by Neale at 4:28 PM on April 16, 2002