MetaFilter posts tagged with ants

The Fungus Overlords

Dumsnill — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:51:34 -0800

I, for one...

Navelgazer — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:04:54 -0800

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...

Let me show you a world of bats and bees, ants and trees, morning glories and a few beached whales

filthy light thief — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:49:39 -0800

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.

Smells Like Spartacus

The Whelk — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:49:06 -0800

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. "

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.)

Ant intelligence

jamespake — Tue, 20 May 2003 01:49:35 -0800

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)

pinto — Sun, 21 Apr 2002 23:37:40 -0800

A 3,600 mile long ant colony was discovered last week in Europe. An amazing feat of cooperative living.

srboisvert — Mon, 15 Apr 2002 18:00:56 -0800

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?

meaning — Fri, 26 May 2000 10:47:09 -0800

What a horrible way to go...