A Floating Mass of Fire Ants in Texas | Hacker News Reader

A Floating Mass of Fire Ants in Texas

theatlantic.com

195 pointsazuajef162 comments

The programming of nature has always fascinated me... Animals and insects always seem to have some mysterious ways of handling environmental calamities and surviving.

I recall an incident a few years ago here where I live in Australia. We live close to a series of cliffs overlooking a beach, and I walk along those cliffs every morning. There was one day when I noticed strange lumps on the grass and walking track. Upon closer observation, I saw that these were hundreds, nay, thousands of hermit crabs, and they were crawling across the ground and heading for every tree and bush in the vicinity, then climbing up them as high as they could.

I had NEVER seen hermit crabs do this before.

Then, two days later, we had a huge storm hit, and combined with unusually high tides, it ended up with most of the cliff top areas being flooded or overrun with water.

How on earth did all these hermit crabs know that this was about to happen 48 hours in advance of the event?? How did they know that they had to climb the cliffs and seek out higher ground within the trees and bushes there?

There must be an amazing environmental consciousness just thrumming along outside of 'civilised' human perception that I wish we could tap back into...

So many birds and insects seem to be sensitive to the magnetic forces deep within the planet. I've never met a human being who was consciously aware of these forces, but I've met plenty of spiritualists who called them something else. Ask any old person whose body reacts to pressure changes in the weather, and they'll point out which bones ache when a storm is approaching. They're usually right.

As humans, we brush it off. It's just a feeling, or we're having a bad headache, and need to take some medicine. To a small insect whose entire world can change in a flash though, these signals are a monumentally important part of how they sense the world. Especially I think in absence of more complex visual perception that we humans use to bridge the gap.

Nature is amazing! The more we study it, the less we realize we actually know.

I do recall reading about an experiment many years ago where a group of university students were blindfolded and taken to a remote hill outside of their town. They were then (still blindfolded) asked to point to their homes, and it turns out that most of them managed to point fairly accurately in the direction where they lived.

No idea of the validity or scientific basis for that 'experiment', but as you mentioned - that mysterious ability for older people to 'feel' weather changes in parts of their bodies, or that 'gut feeling' that a lot of people get when they are being watched by hostile eyes... There is a lot more going on to our unconscious perception of the world that we realise.

There are some facets however, that are easily explainable, such as people "smelling the rain coming" when it is in fact the higher moisture content in the air making our smell receptors work better at smelling the everyday environment around us... But there are some phenomena which aren't as easily explained.

I hope that we can begin to be more adept at recognising the unconscious prompts, which I think will make us much better are relating to the world around us.

> They were asked to point to their homes and most of them managed to point fairly accurately in the direction where they lived.

Blind people can still hear, smell and perceive the wind direction and use it to make a mental map of their (well known) surrondings. Zero mystery here and no scooby snack for those scientists.

Note that the supremacy of science is so absolute that mystics need to anchor their theories back to it somehow: "magnetic forces deep within the planet" as an explanation (vs. something obviously mystical / supernatural / pretend such as demons or spirits).

Since the scientific process is so powerful in its ability to understand reality, let's follow it all the way through to the end. Meaning: let's ask a zoologist about hermit crabs anticipating a storm, rather than a spiritualist.

The crabs likely have a 'notion' of the tides. In this case perhaps the high tides were increasing past the point where the crabs 'remembered' them ever going. Then the approaching storm dropped the air pressure which additionally boosted the high tide and perhaps was also directly sensed by the crab.

Just thinking around the idea of emergent behavior through evolution.

Definitely a relationship there. The trick is discovering those relationships and interpreting them.

Once when I was out at a remote Aboriginal community, one of the locals there was telling me that the women of the community know when it is time to go and harvest the mussels in the bay because a particular flower will be in bloom. Could be pure coincidence or particular weather patterns which stimulate both, but the idea that shellfish proliferation is linked to a land flower's blooming cycle is freaky.

Similarly, my mother in law had a particular orchid that only flowered once a month - always at the peak of the full moon. Was it a combination of night luminescence and gravitational pull that told the plant when to flower?

It would seem that so called 'primitive' people seem to sense, feel and interpret these things more so than city dwellers of today.

> Was it a combination of night luminescence and gravitational pull that told the plant when to flower?

Almost definitely light response - orchids are pollinated by a wide variety of insects, including night active moths.

Almost definitely not 'gravitational pull' as the moon's mass does not vary based on the amount of light it reflects towards one particular direction.

It is a lot easier to tune into nature when you aren't inundated with WiFi signals, radio waves, lights, city noise, etc. Just go camping for a week without any devices to get a small sense of this.

You might enjoy the AntsCanada channel on YouTube. This guy somehow makes 15 minute videos about ants quite enthralling. I'm hooked!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCONd1SNf3_QqjzjCVsURNuA

Never thought I'd see Ants Canada on HN. It's a great channel!

Its a tautology (circular reasoning)- that which survives has figured out how to survive. In other words, fitness is that which survives.

Of interest in the article is this:

> flooded fire ants deliver higher doses of venom because they have 165 percent as much venom inside them as normal fire ants

Growing up in rural Texas I can assure you that fire ants were never to be messed with (unless you had fire/gasoline).

I got stung once 3 or 4 times on my ankle, which was swollen for about 3 days. The bites were hug. The oozed a milky liquid. We doused them in calamine lotion, but it still didn't stop something like arthritis from hurting.

Having been stung by wasps and bees, I find those preferable to fire ant stings. I couldn't imagine getting stung by something over 50% worse.

That doesn't happen to everyone. They are just a minor irritation for me, the bite itself is the worst part. Sometimes it'll itch for a couple days with a little pimple, but even that's rare.

I know people who bruise and break out horribly from them, though.

Perhaps you have a mild allergy?

Sounds like you are allergic. When I sustain bites they are virtually painless for me but they form those annoying pus filled blisters that last for a few days and itch like crazy.

I think you're allergic to fire ants. They hurt, and you do get those zit-like sores, but I would much rather get a few fire ant bites than a bee or especially a wasp sting.

Austinite here. I've been bitten hundreds of times by fire ants. Often, a couple dozen bites at a time (eg, doing yard work in tall grass, not realizing I'm standing next to a fire ant mound, and getting swarmed before I know it).

They are far less painful than wasp stings, by a factor of 100 or more. On the other hand, a wasp sting goes away pretty quickly, but fire ant bites usually result in pimple-like sores that itch, and it takes the better part of a way to go away.

Pity the grad student responsible for generating this number.

Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_sting_pain_index and walk away in disbelief.

And the infographic: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-colorful-pain-index...

> Baldfaced Hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.

> Sweat Bees: Light and ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.

Haha, the pain descriptions remind me of a wine menu

Not game ending options in Zork?

I love the yellowjacket description:

> hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.

A few years ago, I got stung by one on my Ankle in Florida. I still have a scar (5mm circle). I wouldn't imagine swimming on one of these nest, I would probably die...

Texans are often regarded as having an affinity for gun ownership. I think that's silly. They clearly should all be packing flame-throwers.

Who says HN hates humor?

Indeed. I hate those things and conduct vicious chemical warfare against any nests that pop up in my yard.

   There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks.

I guess I've learned something new today.

Houstonian here. Apparently all you need is some Dawn soap to break their surface tension!

I've always been fascinated by ants since childhood and love watching them, but these floating islands are the worst ambush I can imagine. Good to know they have a kryptonite.

Before readers run out and try this, there is a technique and protocol that should be followed, or you won't like the consequences. I'll let a post on /r/natureismetal do the typing for me [1], and here's a copy-pasta for those who don't want to click through (more scientific explanation [2] of why this works within seconds...to make sure around these bastards from hell, I gave 'em two minutes to display proof of death---put a stick in the drowned mass and lift it up---before I moved on to hunting down the next raft):

-------- clip here --------

You're all going to love this. It's environmentally friendly, it's inexpensive, it's 100% lethal, and makes them die in the most horrible manner possible.

Dish soap.

Put a tablespoon or two into a spray bottle, then add about 2-3 cups of water. Swish the water to mix. Do not shake! You don't want foam in the bottle.

MOVE. UP. STREAM. Seriously, you don't want to be downstream of this when it happens.

Now, starting in the middle of the mass, start spritzing with the soapy water, and work your way out to the edges.

The soap will break the surface tension, and act as a wetting agent on the ants. As a result, the water will now start wicking up their bodies, enveloping them like living quicksand. And with the surface tension broken, the mass of ants will start to sink.

Remember, start in the middle! This will cause the center to sink first, and drag the edges down last. The ants will all hold on to each other and drag every last one below the surface. With a soft bloop, the entire mass will drop.

Remember how I said to move upstream? If you're downstream, the entire submerged mass could end up wrapped around your legs. Where they will immediately begin clawing their way to the surface, using you as a ladder.

Best of all, you can scale up your operation, and load a backpack sprayer with a bottle of Dawn and a few gallons of water. Then just wade through your neighborhood, wiping them out for the benefit of everyone!

-------- clip here --------

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/natureismetal/comments/6wkd4j/firea...

[2] https://www.livescience.com/13867-raft-fire-ants-buoyancy-fl...

For someone out of the area, why would you do such a thing?

Because fire ants are invasive species made of spite.

Fire ants are an invasive species which have wrecked havoc on the local ecology and cause serious human harm.

Fire ants are a foreign invasive species in the United states that kill animals, push out native ant species, cause incredibly painful stings, and trigger sometimes-fatal reactions in some people. They are nasty little balls of hate.

Just combine the ruthlessness of Terminators and Aliens, shrink to insect size and multiply by billions.

You have obviously not been bitten by a fire ant.

Their name was not inspired by their red color, but by their burning, venomous bites which leave huge weeping pustules. If you are allergic or sensitive, it is worse.

If you had ever been bitten, you would understand the desire to kill them if you can, any way you can.

(Bonus: According to the article, the floating ant rafts are 165% more venomous than usual. I cannot imagine.)

to put things in some perspective, they do suck, but are not as bad as a bee sting or wasp sting, at least in my opinion.

However, you are much more likely to get a bazillion bites, for example if you step in a nest and don't notice it until they are crawling up your leg..

My recollection is that you tend to not have just one bite. They are quite aggressive and tend to attack in groups. If you look at pics on the web of fire ant bites, they typically show many bites. Unless you are talking African Killer Bees, this is not typically true for bees.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=fire+ant+bites+&qs=n&fo...

I might be crazy, but I've always been sure they coordinate their bites. You generally don't get bit until several to many ants have crawled onto you, and then you get a rapid succession of bites.

You are not crazy (see other excellent comment). They are evil little beasties. I have been enjoying the descriptions here, like nasty little balls of hate and invasive species made of spite. Those are much more poetic and apt descriptions than I can come up with.

My brother was once sprayed with them by the lawnmower. He was in shorts (so his bare legs were inundated) and he reacts a lot worse to them than most people I know. I took over the lawn mowing for a few weeks after that.

You are not crazy. They do bite essentially at the same time. Scientific explanations of the mechanism behind that perception: [1] [2].

[1] https://articles.extension.org/pages/34572/why-do-fire-ants-...

[2] http://fireant.tamu.edu/manage/faq/

If it's a matter of opinion that they're not as bad as bee or wasp stings, then it sounds like they're still pretty bad.

Fire ants have been known to kill people, especially those too young to escape an attack or those who are bedridden.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/09/990923071322.h...

Thread: https://twitter.com/thebiologistisn/status/90254832929229209...

I hear about this solution every time these ant-balls are discussed, but I've yet to see a video despite extensive searching. I've seen countless videos of them floating, but none with them sinking.

Has anyone found a video (or else is willing to make one :)?

It makes me wonder if you couldn't use one of those "foam guns" or something similar to spread a bunch of such soap around?

Or maybe whatever system they use to lay fire-fighting foam down at airports?

Maybe just fire-fighting foam itself?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighting_foam

Surfactants don't need much to do their work. A spray bottle with diluted soap would probably start the process of sinking the raft.

It doesn't have to be Dawn. Any liquid soap will work.

I actually have a friend back home in TX who owns a store that sells flamethrowers. [1] Sadly, his business is in the bulls-eye of Hurricane Harvey flooding.

[1] http://www.txmgo.com/index.php/shop/flamethrowers

Another alternative is casting a colony with molten metal

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCslpm3Swt7AWO9cJ8c-EZYA

They clearly should all be packing flame-throwers.

When I was growing up in Georgia (last century), we would douse fire ant mounds in gasoline and light it. (This is no doubt illegal now.)

We called them ant roasts.

/heathen

Southern resident here - I know of no state laws in the region forbidding pouring flammable substances in/on your ground and igniting it. Still a very satisfying method of ant removal - if not the most effective for long-term removal.

The only thing to be careful of is local fire ordinances and controlled burn reporting. It's a minor issue, probably wouldn't trip you up in most places. But I have known people who burned (small) piles of leaves without reporting and in non-drought conditions end up with fines for their trouble.

Very much varies by local rules. If you're in a county in GA you can probably get away with it without trouble.

>But I have known people who burned (small) piles of leaves without reporting and in non-drought conditions end up with fines for their trouble.

What you really mean is that you know people with neighbors who don't like them and are well connected enough to not fear reprisal.

I'm sure the EPA and local environmental departments have rules against this.

It's not really any different from a farmer clearing tress and shrubs and burning them in their field. Obviously if you live in the city you probably can't burn without a permit and/or being in a controlled container like a fire pit, but there's a lot of land between cities that doesn't have nearly as restrictive of laws.

If the EPA tried to ban controlled burns, there would be a lot of trouble in rural areas. Its a basic part of working the land.

I'm talking about dumping gasoline in the ground, not the burning part.

Well, that's how people without the fancy burn equipment start their fires.

Pouring petroleum products on the ground is what is generally known as a "HAZMAT SPILL" and requires EPA reporting, remediation of soils and watersheds, etc.

Even in Texas it is banned by the TCEQ, which as with most Texas regulatory agencies exists primarily to prevent any regulations from being promulgated or enforced.

Edit: Just want to add, a single gallon of diesel fuel spilled can contaminate a million gallons of drinking water in a reservoir, stream, or aquifer. It's not a great idea.

I very much like the artistry of this fella's approach ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ2jMZ-gaI

There is an insect researcher who has been doing that to research nest structure. Article and photos here [1]. Some ants have very interesting architecture for their nests.

[1] http://www.core77.com/posts/23607/walter-tschinkels-aluminum...

In the late 90s, I lived in Virginia. We had some kind of ground-dwelling bees living in the neighborhood. If you were unlucky enough to step on a hole, 3 or 4 would come out and sting you.

We did the same thing with some gasoline, at night when it was cooler and the hive/colony was sleepier. My siblings and I still continued to avoid that part of the yard out of habit.

who says we aren't?

When the floods come, it only takes a little bit of soap:

> Fire ant rafts do have a kryptonite: dish soap. “Dawn is a not a registered insecticide, but it will break up the surface tension and they will sink”

Texans are often regarded as having an affinity for gun ownership.

I have a friend who did criminal defense work as a lawyer in Houston. According to him, Houston juries will not be kind to someone they think of as a "gun nut." Texas is a big place, and there's a lot of diversity within. Houston is a splotch of purple in a sea of red, and it will get bluer as time goes on, due to demographic shifts.

Not disagreeing with him as I have no knowledge of the court system but driving around Houston the number of gun stores is insane.

You're not used to it. It's about as remarkable as a liquor store or tire and lube shop to the people who are used to it.

> There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks

So what we need is a bio-engineered species of fire ant that requires some harmless environmental additive to survive. Then we breed them, release them over a tick-infested area, and let them breed long enough to kill off the ticks. Then quit spraying or watever the additive they need and let them die off.

What Could Go Wrong.

But seriously, screw ticks and fire ants.

>But seriously, screw ticks and fire ants.

Yes. Burn them with fire.

Hey, this one we are good at. How wide is the area you want to burn?

Do ants require venom to kill ticks? A species of fire ant that is engineered to be non-venomous might be a win-win: tough survivors that eat ticks.

Reminds me of a Simpson's episode where X eats Y keeps escalating...

  Since the town considered the pigeons to be a nuisance, 
  they are delighted that the lizards have eaten all the 
  pigeons. So, Bart is thanked and honored by Mayor Quimby 
  with a loganberry scented candle. Lisa worries the town 
  will now become infested by lizards rather than the 
  pigeons, but Skinner assures her they will send in "wave 
  after wave of" Chinese needle snakes to eat the lizards, 
  followed by snake-eating gorillas, and then "when 
  wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to 
  death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_the_Mother

screw ticks and fire ants

Diatomaceous earth will do the job. It can be purchased at any farm supply store for pretty cheap. Works on fleas, bedbugs, millipedes, roaches, centipedes ... pretty much any little bug with an exoskeleton. Farm supply store because it's traditionally been used to mix into agricultural feed (food grade DE) as an anti-caking agent.

But works to kill bugs, too. Diatoms in this form are fossilized like microscopic weapons of destruction that get under the exoskeletons of ants and other creepy crawlies and dehydrate them. Best of all: no chemicals involved so they cannot develop resistance. Medieval torture devices on bugs; will desiccate them.

does the fact that it's mechanical really mean that they can't develop resistance? why couldn't they just develop a thicker exoskeleton (for example)?

The thicker exoskeleton would require more energy and protein to produce, increasing the nutritional requirements for survival. Anything that requires substantially more energy better come with a big payoff. I'm not sure that the ability to wander around a house includes such a payoff.

I hope someone from The Atlantic sees this: I will whitelist you for ads but not for trackers. Ads are ok, trackers are the tools of Satan.

Maybe use incognito mode?

If you use Ghostery you can whitelist different "tools" independently. It's very easy to allow all ads and block all trackers. You can also decide to only block certain ads or trackers for specific websites.

Not to mention you can pay to get the ads to go away and block anything that remains.

I've subscribed to the Atlantic dead tree version in the past. I have no problem with that. But their using trackers makes be suspicious that paying won't make the problem go away- only that I won't see it anymore.

EDIT: I could clarify: I tried whitelisting the ads and that wasn't good enough. They wanted me to whitelist the trackers too.

Well, the ads going away is easily visible. I wouldn't stop blocking though; they most definitely continue to track.

I just ude Firefox with javascript turned off (about:config search javascript, toggle javascript.enabled to false). No apparent anything.

Thanks- that's what I do also (but with noscript). I'm just calling their attention to the issue that turning on trackers != turning on ads. And, they shouldn't be using trackers.

I stepped about knee deep into a fire ant mound when I was 8 in Florida. I thought I was going to die. I've never seen something swarm quite that fast.

the mound just collapsed around your foot and you sank in?

Accidentally stepping in or standing on a fire ant mound is a terrible rite of passage for kids in Florida. Even if you just step on one, which when inactive can look like just another a patch of sand, those little bastards swarm out crazy fast. They'll easily be halfway up your leg before you realize what's happening. One moment, you're tossing a ball or frisbee with friends and waiting for the next throw, the next: horrible child screaming.

They actually swarm first without biting and then once they get a critical mass covered they chemically send a command to all bite at once.

I’m not kidding.

I lived in Texas for a while and we had fire ants on our property every so often. One time I was taking out the trash, and a lone ant got on my hand, but was just wandering around aimlessly. I watched it for probably a full two minutes, and then completely out of the blue it decided to bite me. Only years later did I learn that the behavior you mentioned is what I was seeing.

So they are evil incarnate.

I had them in an extremely large mound by another house I lived in as an adult. I tossed a handle of 151 into it and lit it on fire. Payback.

> So they are evil incarnate.

No, they are just insects defending their hive.

Evil incarnate would cause torment for no reason?

You could be sitting on the ground minding your own business, not hear a hive and one will climb on you and start bitting.

Does that count for causing torment for no reason?

That is one of the many reasons why it is unusual to sit directly on the ground in Florida without something like a picnic blanket.

Not really, because there is still a hive nearby which they are protecting. You are a potential predator that they are trying to move on.

They might be a nuisance. Indeed, they might be a invasive and dangerous nuisance which we need to be exterminated, but that does not make them evil, and neither does it require glee to carry out that task. They are ants is all. They have, in evolutionary terms, found and developed a niche for themselves just as we have.

It's instincts, it does not have brain capacity to think "ha ha ha a human! Let's be evil and ruin their picnic".

Probably instead what happens is while crawling around it detects the surface it crawled on is actually the body of a large living entity, so going into defense mode is one possible response. Not sure if in this case it's because it may make you move to get free if stuck under you, or chase away possible threats to nest, or because possible food source?

Jesus christ. As much as I hate the cold, I'll stick with snowstorms and blizzards over this stuff.

I'm pretty sure it's motion that triggers them to sting at once. Chemical signals just draw more ants.

Yes. Some old timers call them "whistle ants".

Because (as I was told) once they are all on and in position one of them blows a whistle to signal "start stinging".

I was running around in a field of about waist deep grass. Didn't even see it until my foot was coming out shoe filled with the little bastards.

Same to me around that age, though I was in the Philippines. I spent the rest of the day with my legs under the water hose (it alleviated some of the pain) just crying. I'm mildly allergic to ants too. These pictures of floating ants are terrifying.

> There is at least one possible upside: Fire ants love to eat ticks. The area where the fire ants landed may be crawling with stinging ants for a while. “But it’ll have absolutely no ticks. So it’ll be lovely from that perspective,” says Wild.

Sounds like on balance they might do more good than harm, then? Fire ant stings are painful, but they're nothing compared to Lyme disease.

can we import them to CT?

MA to ME already have a different species of Fire ants[0]; from Europe though, not S. America. Please do not purposely import these foreign species.

[0]https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/2550e/

should clarify that I am not serious. I've just had Lyme disease enough times to want to kill ticks.

Better solution, AFAICT, is aggressive reduction in deer populations. Hunting and predator reintroduction to bring deer population down into historical norms would seemingly reduce a major host/transport mechanism, and would have secondary benefits for the hardwood forest ecosystem.

Yes - bring back the wolves!

Small rodents/birds are also one of the primary food supplies for larval ticks, so reducing these populations should help to disrupt their life-cycle[0]. The smaller ticks are the ones more likely to infect you as well, since they are harder to spot.

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/lyme/images/lifecycle.jpg

While this is true, the average mouse never goes more that 300 feet from their dwelling. While mice can infect deer ticks with lyme disease, it is deer that are primarily responsible for spreading the disease to new populations.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3072871/

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140701111549.h...

Ah, I'm not saying it is mice that are the vectors, but that mice are a food that keep Deer Ticks alive in the summer months.

Also, from the conclusion of your NIH article:

>Despite a decrease in EM rash incidence, however, we did not find a statistically significant effect of the deer hunt on EM rash incidence, probably due to LD reporting issues, study design limitations, and the small population size.

From what I have read (I do not have the references handy), while they are called deer ticks the primary hosts/transport are mice.

I was wondering if we could give deer the equivalent of tick/flea collars?

Or maybe put out salt licks where they have to enter through some kind of machine that sprays them with some kind of insecticide.

Not as crazy an idea as you might think:

http://epi.publichealth.nc.gov/cd/rabies/orv.html

http://www.raboral.com/about-rabies/raboral-v-rg

My other ulterior motive in reducing their population is the forest ecosystem, though.

http://tiee.esa.org/vol/v2/issues/figure_sets/deer/overview....

https://blog.nature.org/science/2013/08/22/too-many-deer/

http://strawberryhill.org/hunting-a-reverence-for-preserving...

the last link has some especially troubling photographs of what I'm talking about; growing up I saw those exclosures all around with much the same effect every time.

Possibly a salt lick that just sterilizes the deer?

>Possibly a salt lick that just sterilizes the deer?

Only after we finish putting chemicals in the water to turn the freaking frogs gay.

Easier to just shoot them. The only vehicle out of the 5 we own that has never had a "deer incident" is the newest one. I also have neighbors who almost died when they hit a deer during a motorcyle ride.

I run into a lot of anti-hunting folks who don't realize that we've run the deer's natural predators out of our land because those predators would hurt us, too. Creatures like bears, wolves, etc. Without nature doing its thing, deer become a hazard to themselves (overeating), a hazard to us (car/deer accidents), a nuisance (deer eating my garden) and an economic threat (deer eating a farmer's field).

Either we need natural population control like bear and wolves and accept that those predators will also eat our children, or we need human-driven population control. Also known as hunting.

One thing about small arthropods is that, whatever you do in a large scale against them stops being effective in 2 or 3 years. Always.

But their predators adapt much slowly, so if it is harmful to predators in any way, you trying to kill them will just increase their population.

They've definitely been in TX for at least 40 years, so if they could survive in CT I'm pretty sure they'd already be there by now. Probably too cold.

Except that fire ant stings are guaranteed to be painful. Not all tick bites are guaranteed to give you Lyme's disease.

I'll take the risk. Lyme's disease is a life long issue. Fire ant stings last about a week at the most.

I thought it was "Lyme disease can be a life long issue"?

It is. If diagnosed early (i.e., during the "bulls eye" stage) about a 2-3 week course of antibiotics will take care of it.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease#Treatment

I can vouch for this.

About 15 years back I was living in a rural area of New Hampshire and got the "bulls eye" mark on my leg. Never saw the tick in this case but ticks and bites were common around there.

I promptly went to the doctor to get a course of antibiotics and never had further health issues.

Now I'm in rural Texas and surrounded by fire ants. I need to rethink my life choices.

"Chronic Lyme Disease" is pseudoscience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_Lyme_disease

Not sure if this shows 'pseudoscience' or that there is a reported set of symptoms which science hasn't proven or disproven..

Just because there is not scientific evidence doesn't mean something doesn't exist.

This makes fire ants a trade up. Guaranteed pain is always better than a nonzero chance of a permanent crippling disease.

I'm pretty scared of the Lone Star Tick bite causing me to become allergic to beef.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha-gal_allergy

The fire ants damage many more species than ticks. They've all but destroyed the Texas horned lizard, for example.

Texas has very few cases of Lyme disease. It's mostly a concern in the northeastern states.

Maaaybe because there's lots of fire ants?

Somehow I keep expecting Texans to roast the ants from their boats with flamethrowers pieced together from converted gas grills as they go about rescuing the stranded.

edit: lol, apparently I'm not the only one.

Spray bottle with soapy water would probably do the trick just as easily.

Per another comment, that's a terrible possibly-fatal idea if you're careless enough to do it downstream.

UK: ageing hipster in a temperate and tectonically inactive area of the North - not complacent just grateful...

The more I hear of Texans, the better it gets. Best of luck all.

Texans are like Floridians with more panache.

I live just north of Houston and while checking out the flood waters, I saw just such masses, several of them in fact. If you do bump into them, or they bump into you, they will swarm you.

A little bit of watered down dawn in a hand sprayer would fix that...

Coincidentally this reminds me of a really strange MacGyver episode from the 80s

Could humans realistically do something similar by grabbing on to one another with arms extended out (imagine three people, A onto B and C, B onto A and C, and so forth). People have been able to do some crazy things, like these ants, under the right circumstances.

It's always so sad to see people drown. It would be neat if we could create an emergency human raft in such desperate times in a pinch.

Sadly no, the area/volume/power relationships are wrong, a bit like people flying by flapping hard enough. We also lack exoskeletal structures, so we'd be crushed.

I was thinking something more of the lines of length/width than height (in the case of the ants). Though, I feel your point applies there as well.

The ants are small enough and light enough that they float because of surface tension. These ant rafts operate on a similar effect to how Gerridae (pond skaters) walk on the water's surface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerridae

The human body is far too dense and large for surface tension based floating to work. Humans can survive reasonably long times in water by employing the Dead Man's Float though.

No, and not even in the Dead Sea [1], unless they start with linked arms on shore, walk into that sea, and link legs as soon as they can, so they all face upwards.

[1] http://io9.gizmodo.com/5798844/why-so-many-people-drown-in-t...

That is a recommended form if everyone has life preservers on (especially if you have small children -- they float in the middle of the group), but like the others have said, without additional flotation devices, it doesn't work.

I find it interesting that during this period this invasive species is vulnerable to attack. It also makes me wonder about all of the other nominally 'land' based insects. Beetles? Other species of ants? spiders? What is the insect ecosystem impact of a huge die off like this? Does it make native species more vulnerable? give them breathing room (presumably they would have evolutionary advantages to surviving these events if they evolved in the area).

I am back to ... one million ants

Wasn't there some sort of classical math problem that this illustrates somehow? surface tension, math theory, etc? (my memory for this sort of thing isn't great)

Perhaps I missed it, but are all the ants alive in this raft? Seems tricky to manage without some of them being submerged underwater for an extended period of time..

Some of the ants will drown. But they use the arrangement of bodies to trap air bubbles, keeping the colony as a whole afloat and alive. Its an amazing trick to have figured out.

> to have figured out.

Here is a short clip my brother sent me a few days ago. http://i.imgur.com/QllUKZe.gifv

They are very much alive.

Anyone else notice how circular that mass was? Nature loves economy.

So what happens to the ants on the bottom of the pile?

They couldn't survive forever, of course, but they're small enough that they actually bring down little bubbles of air.

it would be terrifying wading though the water and seeing a huge mound of fire ants ants floating nearby

There are far more terrifying things in flood waters than fire ants, starting with sewage and bacteria, moving on up to animals driven mad from drinking the water, and then on to stepping into a bloated dead corpse.

I remember the cows that went mad from drinking salt water post-Rita and thinking that I'd take a zombie attack over insane dying cows screaming while wading through the bloated corpses of the herd's dead.

At least the ants are quiet, don't stink, and are frankly more motivated to stay alive by retaining their ball than to pursue you. They're way more of a threat to floating bodies (and the people recovering or disposing of those bodies) than to living evacuees.

To be fair, as someone who walked into one of these masses during the Baytown flood of the 90's (back when the San Jacinto caught on fire, that one), I'll take screaming cows, snakes, and rabid raccoons over floating masses of fire ants. All the former can be shot or kept away with a stick, not to mention seen from a distance. Those ant rafts can sneak around between other floating detritus and catch you by surprise, and there is no defense once they catch you.

Unreal

That would suck for you, but would be good from a ecological perspective - eating red meat isn't our most sustainable practice.

It's also not the only thing tick bites can make you allergic to. Lifelong issues are a possibility from a tick bite.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15132666 and marked it off-topic.

colony remain 1 million ants!

you can't keep the drones!

I'm sorry but how is this got to be on the first page of HN? I seen similar article on.. DailyMail. How is this related to hacking and technology? Just curious...

It doesn't, much like the Rob Vagg/Node.js internal politics story we had the other day.

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