The Fungus Overlords
posted by Dumsnill on Jul 30, 2009 - 30 comments

Introducing Our New Ant Overlords. Argentine Ants (Linepithema humile) have spread to every continent aside from Antarctica, forming Supercolonies such as stretching 3,700 miles (6,000km) of the Mediterranean. Once thought to be independent of one another, scientists now have cause to believe that the disparate Supercolonies in fact make up one global Mega-Colony. They are highly invasive, attack native animals, thrive in fast-growing, high-density colonies, and have an increased capability for cooperation. "The enormous extent of this population is paralleled only by human society," the researchers claim...
posted by Navelgazer on Jul 6, 2009 - 61 comments

The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, casually referred to as Sōkendai (a contraction of Sōgō kenkyū daigakuin daigaku), was founded in 1988 as the 96th national university in Japan. Amongst other things, it is home to the Soken Taxa Web Server which in turn hosts the first online Japanese Ant Color Image Database that currently lists 273 species of ant, the Illustrated Guide of Marine Mammals and the Marine Mammals Stranding DataBase, the Mammalian Crania Photographic Archive that currently includes 704 specimens, the Morning Glories Database that covers the many mutants of Ipomoea nil, closely related species and interspecific hybrids, the Makino Herbarium Database, which is named after the pioneering Japanese botanist, Tomitaro Makino, and the Japanese Bees Image Database.
posted by filthy light thief on Apr 20, 2009 - 5 comments

The Uprising Of The Ants: "Alexandra Achenbach and Susanne Foitzik from Ludwig Maximillians Universty in Munich found that some of the kidnapped workers don't bow to the whims of their new queen. Once they have matured, they start killing the pupae of their captors, destroying as many as two-thirds of the colony's brood. "
posted by The Whelk on Apr 2, 2009 - 32 comments

Today's date? Why, it's...July 11, 2052, and man has been cowering in terror, self-sealed in his own living-tombs since that day of horror in...1952. Remember? 100 years ago, the sky above America turned black...with the dread flight of millions of ferocious, gigantic ants! [more inside]
posted by kittens for breakfast on Sep 5, 2008 - 56 comments

Continuing the recent theme of horrifying parasites, here's an infectious little nematode that makes its host swell up into a plump, juicy, red berry so that birds will mistakenly eat its bloated ichorous abdomen and spread the eggs. (via) [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Jan 21, 2008 - 31 comments

The trap-jaw ant, best known for its powerful jaws which hold the land speed record for movement at 145 miles per hour, is brilliantly captured in a short film shot at 100,000 frames per second. [more inside]
posted by dhammond on Dec 28, 2007 - 70 comments

Antbuster: Friday Flash Fun
posted by Rubbstone on Jul 20, 2007 - 12 comments

Ants are so cool. Click previous sentence for more information.
posted by thirteenkiller on Mar 22, 2006 - 18 comments

Visualising Networks is fun. So are Monkey Networks (ppt). Dolphin Networks (pdf). Ant networks can aide network design. Does the Brain Work Like the Internet? Can the Internet Think? The Social Superorganism and its Global Brain? Webog Inequality. A City Is Not a Tree. The I Ching, a network of 384 pathways. The Whole, the Parts, and the Holes. Heterarchy, the secret of Japan, Inc.? Sense/non-sense;hierarchy/heterarchy... Heterachy and Heirarchy: Two Complimenatary categorises of description (pdf). Summary: "Our most significant problems cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which we produced them." (attributed to Einstein)
posted by MetaMonkey on Jan 26, 2006 - 5 comments

Driver ants. Also known as siafu, the ants form colonies of up to 22 million individuals. When on the move, the workers travel in narrow ant highways which are surrounded by the larger soldier ants. Males are also known as sausage flies and are the largest ants found on earth.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs on Aug 27, 2005 - 14 comments

Bee crimes against the colony. Worker policing: the policing of insect societies.
posted by dfowler on Mar 24, 2005 - 15 comments

Gliding ants have an uncanny ability to land on the tree's trunk and climb back to the very spot from which they'd fallen. FAQ, more videos. (via boingboing)
posted by dhruva on Feb 11, 2005 - 14 comments

If a young worker attempts to reproduce, she is spreadeagled by her fellows and kept immobilized for hours or even days. At the end of her sentence, the best she can hope for is a reduction in rank and loss of reproductive capability. Often she is mutilated or killed.

Fascinating article about police-state behavior in insects, complete with information on mutant anarchist worker bees, ant-led coups, and parasitic self-cloning bees. (via BoingBoing.)
posted by Vidiot on Aug 6, 2003 - 5 comments

Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
It has no commander, no overseer or ruler,
Yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest. -- (proverbs 6:6-8)
posted by jamespake on May 20, 2003 - 10 comments

A 3,600 mile long ant colony was discovered last week in Europe. An amazing feat of cooperative living.
posted by pinto on Apr 21, 2002 - 15 comments

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 on Apr 15, 2002 - 22 comments

What a horrible way to go...
posted by meaning on May 26, 2000 - 3 comments