MetaFilter posts tagged with ants

Antpocalypse!!!

kittens for breakfast — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 15:18:46 -0800

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! Despite the reality that the events depicted in "World War III with the Ants" are completely impossible (or so scientists would have you believe), this kind of thing would, just two years later, happen again. And twenty years after that, further proof that ants have it in for us. Mock them if you will!!!

Another Reason I'm Glad I'm Not An Ant

XMLicious — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 06:41:11 -0800

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) By the way, in case anyone was wondering, Wikipedia says that nematodes have amoeboid sperm.

Ballistic Jaw Propulsion of Trap-Jaw Ants

dhammond — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:57:21 -0800

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. [via]

That's MY CAKE

Rubbstone — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 03:55:21 -0800

Antbuster: Friday Flash Fun

Ant cam

thirteenkiller — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 10:58:40 -0800

Ants are so cool. Click previous sentence for more information.

Networks part 2

MetaMonkey — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 12:24:50 -0800

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)

So named as they drive everything out of their path

weretable and the undead chairs — Sat, 27 Aug 2005 02:35:11 -0800

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.

Insect Criminality

dfowler — Thu, 24 Mar 2005 07:30:05 -0800

Bee crimes against the colony. Worker policing: the policing of insect societies.

Gliding ants

dhruva — Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:13:58 -0800

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)

The Five-Year Honey Plan is proceeding apace, comrade.

Vidiot — Wed, 06 Aug 2003 08:29:06 -0800

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.)