
Crazy ants take on fire ants and win - jusben1369
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/02/crazy-ants-take-on-fire-ants-and-win/
======
danso
If you didn't read the NYT's magazine article from last year, "There’s a
Reason They Call Them ‘Crazy Ants’", you should check it out:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/magazine/crazy-
ants.html?p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/08/magazine/crazy-
ants.html?pagewanted=all)

One of the most memorable things I've read all last year

> _They arrived at Mike the Hog-a-Nator’s house a few months after he first
> saw them at the cardiologist’s office. One day his air conditioning stopped
> working. A musty smell seeped from the vents in his living-room floor. So he
> powered up his Shop-Vac to clear them. By the time he was done, he’d sucked
> out five gallons of ants._

Soon he and his wife were waking up to find vast, frantic networks of ants
zipping around the kitchen floor in all directions. When the picture on their
50-inch box television started flickering, Mike took off the back panel and
found the guts throbbing with ants. He got rid of the television.

Outside, dead ants began pooling around the base of the house in heaps so high
that they looked like discarded coffee grounds. (It’s common in Texas these
days for a person who is shown one of these heaps of dead ants to take several
seconds to realize that the solid surface he or she is scanning for ants
actually is the ants.) Mike laid out poison, generating more heaps of dead
ants. But new ants merely used those dead ants as a bridge over the poison and
kept streaming inside.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Thanks for the link. Its a fascinating, if somewhat scary, story to
contemplate. We fight off waves of so-called 'argentinian' ants (small ants
alleged to be native to Argentina) but they tend to be controllable with sugar
bait traps.

Like others who commented on that story and have posted elsewhere the
attraction to electricity is interesting as well. And given their reproductive
rates, one wonders about their use as a feedstock for a bio-fuel process. :-)

------
Blahah
_They used nail polish to seal the acidopore of one group of crazy ants, and
simply sham-treated a second control group. After coming into contact with
fire ant venom, the crazy ants with the sealed acidopores—which could not
secrete any chemical defenses—had a survival rate of just 48 percent, whereas
98 percent of the control group survived. Clearly, something originating from
the acidopore was increasing the survival of ants covered in venom._

Should we give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the nail polish can't
cause that effect?

edit: having now read the paper, there was no mortality in controls with their
acidopore sealed with nail polish.

------
troymc
"By testing crazy ant secretions, the researchers found that the life-saving
substance was actually formic acid from the crazy ants’ own venom."

That quote reminded me of "The Ant" by Ogden Nash, which ends:

Would you be calm and placid

If you were full of formic acid?

~~~
raverbashing
Formic acid, whose name comes from the Latin word for ant, formica
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formic_acid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formic_acid)

So yeah, Formic acid means "Ant acid" really, and that's what hurts.

~~~
StavrosK
Weird, I took an antacid and it was good.

~~~
crystalmace
*eyeroll :)

------
ChrisNorstrom
"When threatened, fire ants inject or dab their enemy"

NO. They bite you regardless of being threatened that's what makes them so
damn evil. They bite everything that can be bitten. If just one gets in your
house and climbs on your couch it will bite your leg just for the hell of it.
That's why every time I see a fire ant mound I pour rubbing alcohol down it. I
have a big respect for normal ants, they're hard workers, but fire ants are
from hell.

------
todd3834
Well that explains these two videos from my house this week!

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/vkhkwk0w7wkzug2/MOV_0387.MOV.mov](https://www.dropbox.com/s/vkhkwk0w7wkzug2/MOV_0387.MOV.mov)
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qh83sq8hrpoarx/IMG_0555.MOV-1.mov](https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qh83sq8hrpoarx/IMG_0555.MOV-1.mov)

These ants are all over my place right now and it is disgusting.

We had an exterminator come out yesterday and he said that he had never seen
anything like this before. Hoping what he did will work.

If anyone on here has suggestions, I really want these things out of my place.

~~~
lafar6502
Also, there are some white granules/powder that ants consider tasty and take
to their nests. In a moist and warm nest the substance produces carbon dioxide
which suffocates the colony. I think it's sugar mixed with baking soda. You
can also use it to destroy nests around your house.

~~~
oakwhiz
I thought it was fine-granule sugar mixed with boric acid.

~~~
trhway
boric acid works like a charm (just draw the lines using the chalk if feeling
like powder is too inconvenient). And it is non toxic. Why would people try
anything else, usually some poison, and/or pay to exterminator, etc... ?

~~~
antjanus
From personal experience, I've tried all of these and none of them work well,
or quickly.

I've used boric acid, baking soda, and everything else. Even chalk. And had
ants just step over them, not care, nor disappear (at least not within 1 month
or so).

Tried the sugar trick, too (different house). And nothing.

I didn't call an exterminator but I did lay down boric acid and baking soda
and used white vinegar as well to deter them. It took a month or so but they
did disappear eventually.

Also, my user name.

~~~
trhway
interesting, just googled:

[http://homeguides.sfgate.com/homemade-ant-killer-boric-
acid-...](http://homeguides.sfgate.com/homemade-ant-killer-boric-
acid-74569.html)

"Boric acid ant killers aren't effective against all species of ant. They work
best against ants that are a nuisance in your home, such as the Argentine ant,
the Pharoah ant and the odorous house ant. These ants are small and usually
black or reddish-black, often called sugar ants. Other ants that normally stay
outdoors, such as harvester ants or fire ants, aren't as receptive to boric
acid ant baits."

we lived through the series of apartments in the Valley, and boric acid
carried us through even though neighbors were heavily infested with
ants/roaches. The ants were small black ones.

------
protomyth
at the end of the article: "Related PSA: crazy ants are attracted to
electronics. So if you're a technology lover living in the southeastern US,
watch your computers and appliances because these tiny invaders are headed
your way."

If I remember right, these things are basically worse overall than the fire
ants because they can really screw up the infrastructure.

~~~
jusben1369
Yes I thought the article odd in that it didn't talk about if crazy ants were
preferred to fire ants in general.

~~~
drone
The general opinion among others I know here in SE Texas was "Yes! Fire ants
are going down! Wait a second..."

Dealing with fire ants was pretty much a way of life, and sure it's great that
the fire ants are down (and now fleas are up!), but we don't really have any
good OTC treatments for raspberry ants, and the sight of a handful of them is
enough to stir a little fear in a homeowner's heart.

At least down here, no one wants the raspberry ants either. You knew that if
you poisoned every fire ant mound in your yard each time one popped up, you
were generally ok (and would have a bit less labor if your neighbors did the
same), raspberry ants? Sheesh - all you can do is call the exterminator and
hope they can make a dent.

------
theboss
It is weird watching two ants fight. Mammals it is pretty easy to understand
what they are trying to do, hit eachother or bite eachother or something.

But ants? It just kind of looks like they are crawling on eachother. I have no
idea how one ant bests another in ant-on-ant combat. Kind of cool

~~~
GhotiFish
Hives are some of natures coolest entities. They do things in aggregate.

So much of what these little creatures do is senseless individually, and
clever in mass. I like them. Shame they're such a pain in the ass.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Along those lines, there is a species of bees that works in unison to kill
huge hornets by simply enveloping them and using body heat to cook them, which
works thanks to a 4-degree difference in each species' maximum survivable
temperature.

(Video warning: Lots of bees, hornets, and some flashing lights that may
affect epileptic viewers.)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6m40W1s0Wc#t=22](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6m40W1s0Wc#t=22)

~~~
corin_
Slight correction (or maybe just clarification) is that the ball of bees
generate a temperature of around 47c not just because that's their body
temperature, but by vibrating muscles very fast to heat it up. Pretty
incredible what nature comes up with.

------
nubs
Sounds straight out of Charles Stross and Cory Doctorow's Rapture of the Nerds
- scary!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rapture_of_the_Nerds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rapture_of_the_Nerds)

------
logfromblammo
Well, I recently had my cable demarcation box colonized by fire ants, so if
tawny crazy ants are worse, maybe I should just move now.

~~~
kens
I had my driveway gate control box invaded by regular ants (Argentine I
think), along with some mysterious cocoons that made it malfunction. It was
easy to get the ants to leave, but repairing the controller was a lot harder.

Gross pictures here: [http://www.righto.com/2010/08/getting-literal-bugs-out-
of-dr...](http://www.righto.com/2010/08/getting-literal-bugs-out-of-
driveway.html)

------
kriro
Why are they "attracted to electronics"? Could one build a trap of sourts that
lures them towards some junk electronics and then kills them there
(electricity or whatever one can think of)

~~~
lutusp
> Why are they "attracted to electronics"?

I've heard they eat the insulation on the wires. This was a issue in Texas
during the (later cancelled) Superconducting Supercollider project -- the ants
kept eating the insulation off the wires.

------
Jun8
For me, these "crazy" ants demonstrate a risky but valuable startup lesson for
certain industries: Think about the biggest weapon your huge competitor has
and use the _same_ thing to fight them, they'll be unprepared. Rather than
running away from the fire ants venomous sting, as any sane creature would do,
they've developed a way to go right at it and nullify one of its biggest
advantages. Caution: you will need a "secret sauce", like these guys do.

Obligatory pg reference that's related: "We delighted in forcing bigger,
slower competitors to follow us over difficult ground. "

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
"Garbage trucks full of money" isn't the biggest weapon our competitor has,
it's like #4 or #5.

------
rthomas6
Everything I've read says that no known normal ant baits or sprays work on
crazy ants, but what do they eat? Surely the ants eat something, and that
something can be poisoned.

------
chadwickthebold
Yet another reason to stay away from the southeast.

------
Houshalter
>Related PSA: crazy ants are attracted to electronics. So if you're a
technology lover living in the southeastern US, watch your computers and
appliances because these tiny invaders are headed your way.

Wait what? How/why are ants attracted to electronics?

~~~
lutusp
> Wait what? How/why are ants attracted to electronics?

It's an open question. During the (later cancelled) Superconducting
Supercollider project in Texas, ants kept invading and eating the insulation
off the cables:

[http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/15/us/fire-ants-to-make-
build...](http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/15/us/fire-ants-to-make-building-of-
atom-smasher-no-picnic.html) (1988)

Quote: "Researchers who hope to study the secrets of nature at the
Government's planned $4.4 billion atom smasher may first need protection from
a venomous ant with a penchant for munching its way through underground
cables."

------
D9u
A few years ago I had an old Thinkpad which I had not used in a few months
when one day I decided to fire it up, but when I opened the lid it was an ant
farm!

Not sure of the ant variety, but I'm in Hawai'i and we have little red fire
ants in some areas.

------
jdrobins2000
Reminds me of Leiningen Versus the Ants
[http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html](http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html)

------
coldcode
Does anything eat these ants in South America?

~~~
Loughla
And then we had to send in snake eating gorillas to take care of the needle
snakes, and then when wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to
death. No problem.

~~~
coldcode
I was asking about their original home area, surely something there has
figured out how to limit their numbers.

------
ahmad1392
I have seen fast moving ants in Iranian desert called loot desert, in eastern
central Iran which do not have marching line up like most smaller ants, and
their venom kill other smaller ants in less than a minute, if a man is bit by
them the place of bite goes red and irritating for 24 hours.

