What is this? A bridge for ants?
August 17, 2018 1:50 PM   Subscribe

The wasp nest was seemingly out of the reach of the invading army ants... but the ants would not be denied. [twitter]

At Interesting Engineering, there are more tweets between Francisco Boni (who tweeted the original video) and others discussing how the ants built the bridge, and how they likely decided to do so, linking to this article from Quanta Magazine.
posted by Halloween Jack (52 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
HAIL ANTS!
posted by The Whelk at 1:56 PM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Army ants vs wasps.... it’s like when the mean kids in your grade school got into a fight.
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:02 PM on August 17, 2018 [12 favorites]


Am I here in time for the, “I, for one, welcome...” jokes?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 2:08 PM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


What is this? A bridge for ants?

No, its the absolute nightmare scenario that will keep me up at night for months. Bad enough they farm aphids on my plants, god, its bad enough they like to come into the house when it rains... but now i'm envisioning a tower of ants from the backyard up to my window, pulsating... alive... hungry... they have moved on from aphid's secretions... now they want... human flesh!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:13 PM on August 17, 2018 [11 favorites]


Am I here in time for the, “I, for one, welcome...” jokes?

Do you want overlord jokes? Because that's how you get overlord jokes.
posted by sysinfo at 2:20 PM on August 17, 2018 [42 favorites]


DO YOU WANT ANTS? BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU GET ANTS!
posted by biscotti at 2:20 PM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]


Just looking at that made me itch! Still, very impressive.
posted by agatha_magatha at 2:21 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


How did they make the bridge. It would seem to defy the laws of gravity.
posted by JamesBay at 2:29 PM on August 17, 2018


It definitely feels like there are ants in my ear now and apparently no matter what I do they could be there.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:29 PM on August 17, 2018 [10 favorites]


I'm now re-envisioning the battles from Clive Barker's "In the Hills, the Cities" as mega-ants vs. mega-wasps and I will never sleep again.
posted by acidnova at 2:31 PM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


but now i'm envisioning a tower of ants from the backyard up to my window, pulsating... alive... hungry...

Just wait until they learn to wave from the back yard!
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:32 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Just wait until they learn to wave from the back yard!

no no no no
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:34 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me. Can't sleep, ants will eat me.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:39 PM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


I love insect Twitter.
posted by not_the_water at 2:45 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


> No, its the absolute nightmare scenario that will keep me up at night for months.

I am strongly in favor of any entity that kills wasps. These ants, they're not nightmares. they're heroes.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 2:46 PM on August 17, 2018 [14 favorites]


Next up with their new single Yu Shaped Death, off their smash record "Leiningen Shitting His Pants," it's Brent Kockman....and the Waspsssssss!
posted by es_de_bah at 2:51 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


How did they make the bridge. It would seem to defy the laws of gravity.


One of the more plausible explanations is that it started as a straight line across the underside of the eaves.

Then, as more ants started to follow the path, laden with their waspy lootz, that pathway started to build up into a thick cord, which then started to sag away from the eave due to gravity. As it started to sag, ants linked their legs to hold the line together. Which allowed more ants on the path, which caused it to sag more, and so on. Eventually, it sagged so much and so many ants were linked, that it reached a sort of stable equilibrium in the form of a drooping loop.

That’s really the only way I can conceive of the loop being formed. They surely couldn’t have started with the loop in mind, because gravity.
posted by darkstar at 2:53 PM on August 17, 2018 [16 favorites]


Thanks, ants. Thants.
posted by jjray at 3:01 PM on August 17, 2018 [14 favorites]


Francisco Boni: At first I was thinking that this was merely a failure mode that happened when they decided to follow & build the bridge (premature optimization gone wrong). Or that there was something in the ceiling affecting the trail pheromones.

All is fair in 'mones and war.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:04 PM on August 17, 2018


Maybe if we give them 3D printers they'll invent space elevators.^
posted by XMLicious at 3:08 PM on August 17, 2018 [6 favorites]


These ants, they're not nightmares. they're heroes.

Look, we all agree the wasps have to go. My issue is simply with the methods employed by the ants. Couldn't they be little more polite about it? Surely this paints the wasps as victims.
posted by ODiV at 3:15 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


No please
posted by Hermione Granger at 3:29 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


absolute nightmare scenario

carl stephenson, leiningen versus the ants
philip k. dick, expendable

sweet dreams.
posted by 20 year lurk at 3:29 PM on August 17, 2018 [9 favorites]


sweet dreams.

*shudders*
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 3:37 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Also Clifford Simak's City (in which the ants take over).
posted by thomas j wise at 3:41 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


**hey y'all: maybe be careful about that page hosting dick's "expendable" which has twice, on re-focus, spawned popups blocked as likely malicious by employer security software.** i do not immediately find another copy of the story on the internet at large.
posted by 20 year lurk at 3:53 PM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]


Cool trick, ants. Parabolas are indeed the best. Now, design a cathedral.
posted by belarius at 3:53 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


When I was a kid I had an anthology of short stories that included Leiningen Versus the Ants. I was fascinated by it and probably read it thirty or forty times over several years. I wasn’t allowed to read horror stuff as a child, and that was one of my first encounters with that feeling of inevitable dread a good scary story can give you.
posted by EarBucket at 4:01 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


An anthology you say.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:11 PM on August 17, 2018 [21 favorites]


An anthology you say.

BOOOOOO I love it
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:14 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


carl stephenson, leiningen versus the ants

Oh, hey, so that's what inspired that MacGyver episode.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:26 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Ants are always incredible. Where exactly did this happen? Also I'm curious, in a scenario like this, do the ants just overwhelm the wasps?
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:20 PM on August 17, 2018


English needs a word for something that's simultaneously beautiful and horrifying. The old usage of awesome comes close, but we need a modern equivalent.

I propose abomignificent.
posted by dazed_one at 6:24 PM on August 17, 2018 [8 favorites]


Let's hear it for teamwork.
posted by 4ster at 6:28 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


Cool trick, ants. Parabolas are indeed the best. Now, design a cathedral.

It's more likely to be a catenary curve, which is what you usually get from holding weight on a chain.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 7:40 PM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]


Yes! Catenary curve! That's the term I was struggling to recall earlier.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:19 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


I wouldn't have thought it possible to feel even the tiniest modicum of sympathy for wasps, but there you have it. Saw the one kinda hovering to the side, and had the distinct feeling it was doing the wasp equivalent of "Well…shit! Now what? I am so screwed."
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:06 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mods help how do I delete this post the internet the entire earth?
posted by loquacious at 11:24 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]


It made me think of Sandkings which I read in Omni magazine lo these many years ago. I didn't realize who the author was until I looked it up recently.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 12:56 AM on August 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


In the Twitter thread there's some discussion that the ants find it hard to walk upsidedown, especially with a load. The bridge helps with that.
posted by Helga-woo at 1:02 AM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


What a gorgeous story. I'm torn between ants and spiders as my favourite arthropods (there are social spiders, but they are a far cry from what the order of Hymenoptera gets up to). If you are ant-curious, Hölldobler & Wilson's books are really good with Journey to the Ants as a natural starting point.
posted by bouvin at 1:33 AM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


FYI, ants hate Gold Bond Medicated Powder. Some combination of talc-ish plus menthol... won't go near that stuff.

Powder up, sleep in peace.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:45 AM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


And sometimes, just like people, ants get collectively stupid and it ends up in a death circle.
posted by elgilito at 2:31 AM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


First they came for the wasps, and I did not speak out, because I was not a wasp.
posted by verstegan at 2:36 AM on August 18, 2018


I'm torn between ants and spiders as my favourite arthropods

I can highly recommend the sci-fi book Children of Time for a lot of very fascinating ant and spider action. Imagine if humans accidentally gave super-intelligence to both species. Such a good book once I got past the skin-crawling reaction.
posted by ukdanae at 3:50 AM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Unlinked the "Expendable" link, since it was possibly unsafe, per OP.
posted by taz (staff) at 5:36 AM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]


So they make this big dangling ant-loop (instead of just walking to the nest upside-downy-like along the ceiling) in order to confuse the wasps (and humans, apparently), or what else is the gambit here? It does feel a little like over-engineering to me...
posted by Namlit at 6:07 AM on August 18, 2018


Ah answer in linked article, I saw that now. Learned something: ants can't carry loads upside down. I'll move my kitchen supplies to the ceiling...
posted by Namlit at 6:09 AM on August 18, 2018


In addition to the "stop" and "go" instincts you would think that there must be another (pheremonal) signal from ants whose loads are getting too high that causes nearby walkers to link into the bridge to take up load.
posted by MattD at 8:10 AM on August 18, 2018


Army ants would literally eat you alive if you stayed still long enough. I have vivid memories of having to disrobe in the middle of the jungle because I had unknowingly become covered in army ants which had all suddenly and simultaneously decided to start biting the shit out of me. Fuck ants. I have a lot of respect for ants, but I give them a wide berth now. Wasps mostly mind their own business.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 9:37 AM on August 18, 2018 [4 favorites]


I can highly recommend the sci-fi book Children of Time
Oh! Sounds promising. A seminal spider SF work is of course Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky.
posted by bouvin at 1:43 PM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]


How did they make the bridge. It would seem to defy the laws of gravity.

If you look closely you can see the admiralty fringe which gives those ants sovereignty to do as they please.
posted by srboisvert at 1:45 PM on August 18, 2018 [5 favorites]


« Older Leets conseyedeer a passahgee from a...   |   Yo Yo Mas Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments