Let us now praise tiny ants | Hacker News Reader

Let us now praise tiny ants

nytimes.com

93 pointsHooke70 comments

The E.O. Wilson anecdote at the end amused me since he says if there are ants invading your kitchen you should lay out a piece of food and I thought he meant this to trap the ants somehow. But no he meant to just introduce yourself to your new neighbors!

In my experience, the best way to get rid of ants is to find where they are getting in and trace their supply lines back to the colony where you can dig it up and kill the queen. When I was little we had an ant problem in our house and one evening on the back patio I laid out an oreo, a strawberry, some saltines, and a few other snacks to see which ones the ants would like the most. The next morning our patio was a literal carpet of ants. The oreo and strawberry were long gone and they were working on the crackers with less enthusiasm. Following the ants we could see that the colony was underneath our green turtle sandbox off the end of the patio. Pushing it aside revealed the most intricate and bustling ant colony I've ever seen -- with separate chambers for eggs, larva, and pupa and tunnels interconnecting them across a 3 foot radius. Sadly, this colony was a big problem for us so my mom and I dug into the chambers until we found the queen (the one ant 10- or 20x larger than the rest) and then we killed it. Within weeks the colony was collapsing and our years-long ant infestation was resolved.

Since then everything about ants has been fascinating to me, from their physiology as this article gets into, to their behavior and organization. I even made a web game about ants at antocracy.io where you control a queen ant and use pheromones to influence your otherwise-autonomous workers.

You write well

Unfortunately this doesn’t work well in much of California due to argentine ants having a much more decentralized structure with a single massive mega colony (there are thousands/millions of queens in a massive connected super colony). Sometimes queens even go along with the foragers!

Advion ant gel is a gift from the insecticidal gods when it comes to controlling argentine ants in Southern California. It's not a nerve agent until converted by ant digestion using an enzyme not found in mammal guts so it's comparatively safe to use around humans, and the ants never develop resistances to it. We're still surrounded by a massive super colony reaching from San Diego to Santa Barbara, but I have no problems keeping my house and yard ant free, side from the occasional and inevitable failed incursions.

Have you seen the "Ants Canada" youtube channel? Combines fascinating ant info with fun and very good story telling.

I was wondering who would bring it up first! I really enjoy watching it, the videos are stunning and generally high quality content. And the ants are just really interesting to watch. (i like the fire ants the best)

Can't do that with our ants, they don't walk in a long line anymore, instead they appear as individuals moving about randomly without any obvious source.

Some other ones are really tiny with light orange colour so you can't easily spot them, and another type had a really strong carapace so when you squashed them they'd play dead for a while before walking off like nothing happened.

Pretty sure they're evolving.

Crazy ants? http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/urban/ants/crazy_ant.htm

Nah, they're a small all black ant that looks like this:

https://www.aepma.com.au/PestDetail/2/Black%20House%20Ant

Don't know if they're a different species or what tho.

Digging isn't always an option. I've found just using standard ant bait works pretty well. Ants find it and carry it back to the colony where the rest of the colony (including the queen) eat from it and perish.

I love how they move and hide the eggs once you uncover them. They do it so fast! The eggs seem to all disappear over a few minutes.

Kurzgesagt is running an ongoing animated series about ants, highly recommend.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_e0CA_nhaE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqECNYmM23A

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3QTAgHlwEg

I really wondered if this would be related to the mockumentary "Look Around You"[1]'s somewhat famous "Thanks ants... Thants"[2] line. If you're reading my comment and you haven't run across these, you might find them pretty amusing.

But... it is (reasonably) not related to those things at all.

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBaVwwuErmU

2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jtU9BbReQk

We moved into a house in the fall that had an active carpenter ant infestation. We were also getting occasional surges of sugar ants through the winter.

As both colonies were kicking back up in the spring, my oldest started asking a lot of questions about ants.

I shared one story that I was told decades ago and have never had the chance to confirm. Maybe someone here will know of the right resource.

Before ants, the forests were literally starving under the weight of fallen trees. When trees died, there wasn't enough natural rot to remove the wood and leave room for new undergrowth. Then ants evolved, and ant saliva is full of formic acid [0], and that breaks down wood. Suddenly, old dead wood wasn't a hurdle for regrowth, and the forests and nature prospered with new and evolving flora.

[0] I might have the type of acid wrong this many years later.

I've always liked this story, but if you told me it was bunk I wouldn't be shocked. I'd like some confirmation either way!

The acid's definitely right- 'formic' comes from fourmis, the french word for ant!

Even older -- both come from Latin formica, which also just means "ant."

On the other hand, the plastic called formica, familiar as a countertop surface, has nothing to do with ants but comes from "for mica", for which it was originally developed as a subtitute.

There is also the word "formication": Formication is the sensation that resembles that of small insects crawling on (or under) the skin when there is nothing there.

I believe you are thinking about lignin digestion - an action of certain fungi, but its contribution to the end of the Carboniferous is debated.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/01/why-was-most-of-the-...

As interesting as it would be, ants don’t seem to play a big role here.

Ah, I've not heard of ants as a cause for the fall of the carboniferous era. Sounds plausible tho. I thought it was mushrooms and their eventual discovery of how to dissolve lignin.

https://www.astrobio.net/also-in-news/fungi-marked-the-end-o...

The earliest known ants are around 100 million years ago. The carboniferous era ended around 300 million years ago. Ant as an explanation doesn't seem plausible to me.

The story you were told is false. Ants don't eat wood. Most ants are predators or scavengers, and some have evolved symbiotic relationship with certain fungi.

Dead wood is degraded mostly by fungi, because other organisms lack the enzymes required to digest the polymers that make wood hard, called lignin.

I use to have many ant problems - and certainly not due to any lack of cleanliness.

It pretty much all went away once I got a cat. At first I thought it was coincidence, but over the years I noticed if I ever killed a random ant the cat would start rolling around and scenting the very spot the ant was killed.

I don’t have any scientific proof, but I have to think the cat’s scent/pheromones interferes with the ants and prevents more from following/coming.

Curious to hear any similar experiences

Or your cat just killed and ate all the one who tried and they don’t even try anymore.

You can always ruin the paths they walk on with just your hand or a rag or whatever.

As far as cat event repelling them, I have no idea.

I have three cats and they don't seem to affect the ants at all. They won't eat them because they're bitter.

It's possible you're on to something. When an ant is killed/crushed, the body releases a chemical that signals the rest of the ants to go on a rampage and find whatever the threat is.

My family had severe ant problems with two cats in the house. I've never seen or heard of behavior like your cat's around ant death sites. I suspect you have a rare or unique situation, assuming it's not a coincidence.

with images for nojs users:

http://archive.is/muA1i

Thank you.

I can’t remember ants to have ever been an issue in Europe but I clearly remember how terrible they can be in India or Guyana: the biting kind in your bed and hamac, the smallest kind in sugar and flour, the large ones under everything wooden...

It’s difficult to imagine the impact such little creatures can have on our daily life at tropical latitudes.

I remember ants from my youth. They ran around outside, if you lifted a tile 100's would scatter, and sometimes one would bite you.

However, due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_nitrogen_c... (and agricultural monoculture) the amount of ants I now see in "the wild" (garden, forest) has dropped very significantly...

Antics aside.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Ant Overlords!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_IV_(1974_film)

But what are the actual environmental benefits of ants? Anyone care to explain?

Ive looked around on the net for this but imo the info is a bit scarce.

The 'benefits' of an individual element of our ecosystem can be hard to quantify directly but I'd hazard a guess at

a) abundant food source for larger animals,

b) waste processing and disposal, and

c) pest control, although 'pest' is a relative term - perhaps better to characterise their place as helping to keep other populations in balance, part of the dynamic equilibrium if you like

Their tunnels also aerate soil, like earthworms. Though, IMHO, it's pretty foolish to look for specific, enumerated "benefits" of native animals. They co-exist with a variety of other organisms in complex ways and removing any one of them can have unexpected fallout[1].

Also, if we're asking this question about ants, I really hope no one asks "But what are the actual environmental benefits of humans?" about us.

[1] https://ethology.eu/how-wolves-change-rivers/

I'm not really looking for reasons to wipe out colonies, I'm thinking about reasons for introducing them.

For example, can they be beneficial in reversing desertification? Do they help plants by somehow bringing them nutrients?

I'm very curious as I'm certain they have huge benefits, I'm just not sure exactly what they are ...

Try thinking about it more holistically. It's not so much that ants on their own are great for a specific purpose, but rather that they work together with other parts of the ecosystem to make the whole thing work. If you're so inclined, maybe it's useful to think about neural networks; take a face-recognition network, pick any node, then ask 'what is this good for?'.

d) soil aeration/permeability

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1008891901953

and your point c) is a pretty big one

An example from the article:

> Winnow ants disperse so many herbaceous seeds in North America, Dr. Rice notes, that “removing them causes wildflower abundance to drop by 50 percent.”

I prefer ants which are a bit taller than these tiny ones.

Thanks Ants! THANTS

Isn't everyone usually praising taller ants? https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/taller

I've had a slightly irritating problem with ants this past year---considering everything else.

They were using electrical cables (Romex) as a highway to my house. They were also using the spaces between wood to gain entry.

Cleanliness did help, but there were times where I gave up. They just kept coming over the same routes no matter how festidious I got. One time they were eating the coating off a dropped Ibuprofen pill.

I bought the ant traps. For a few months they worked like magic. Then the ants walked right past the traps. It's almost like they knew not to go into the white houses?

I think insects are much more intelligent than we give them credit for.

What did work, or I just got lucky, is finding the openings they were coming through, and blocking off the access, and as much as I didn't want to spray Raid, I did. I didn't spray it all over though. I used a small amount directed to the point of entry. No more than a few sq. inches of spray.

So far it has reduced the number of ants, but I wouldn't be suprised if they were holding a meeting right under me right now, looking to find new entry points to my house though?

I don't know if this works on all ants, but try a line of cinnamon. Ants won't walk over the line so we used to use it around antholes at the base of walls.

That helped us a lot as a kid!

Good luck, hope it helps!

We burn cinnamon roots (is that what they are called?) in small bowls to avoid this problem during summer. Might be worth giving a shot. The smoke coming out of the bow, if it doesn't fly away immediately, will hide the pheromones. It also help us reduce mosquitos as well, but I don't know why that works.

Cinnamon spice is actually a bark. Unless you're literally referring to the bark in which ignore this.

The pieces of dried curled cinnamon bark we buy for cooking are usually called cinnamon sticks, of that's what you mean by the "roots".

> Then the ants walked right past the traps. It's almost like they knew not to go into the white houses?

They leave trail of pheromones when they go back with food. If ants go somewhere but never return - this path won't have any pheromones and other paths will get more appealing over time.

There are even algorithms for solving hard problems in programming based on that :)

> They leave trail of pheromones when they go back with food. If ants go somewhere but never return - this path won't have any pheromones and other paths will get more appealing over time.

Most traps do not kill the ants on contact. Ants are supposed to take whatever is in the trap and bring it back to the colony.

Knowing that scent plays into how they alert other ants, I use a hand held vacuum to clean them up. They keep coming this instead of hiding.

If they going from one spot, maybe zapping them with laser one by one until they are all dead.

Instead of trying to keep them out, consider giving them an alternative. I put small piles of sugar outside of my house in the hopes that they won't need to go exploring for food. So far it has greatly reduced (but not eliminated) masses of ants invading my kitchen all summer.

The risk is you give them the fuel to breed, creating more ants for the future.

I'm not really into the idea of just killing everything that annoys me.

You remind me of a story my grandpa would tell me. One time he was getting off a bus and he saw a woman a few yards a way throwing bread to pigeons. She was saying "oh look at all the pretty birdies. Oh pretty birdies.". Then one of the pigeons layed one thick on her eye. "@%#$ you damn birds %#&@"

Just keep donating piles and piles of sugar to the ants and leave the house for a week or go outside.

I've used diatomaceous earth with good results for various things I don't want in my house. I don't mind sharing my home with spiders and the like. But fleas are not welcome. And the previous homeowners planted some lovely peonies outside their hundred year old home. So ants. Lots of ants. They weren't after anything in our house, just happened to wander inside because their favorite plants were just on the other side of the wall.

I also keep one or two of these on hand at all times: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat#:~:text=The%20cat%20(Fel.... Very helpful for the handful of creepy crawlies that make their way in. The older model we have is incredibly effective. The one we purchased last year isn't as efficient unfortunately.

I didn't imply this

Maybe the rats scare the ants.

I had some very tiny ones actually walk the threads of a sealed peanut butter jar lid to get into it. I, of course, found this after I had eaten the sandwich. Extra protein that day, I suppose.

Anyway, Terro liquid ant bait has worked very reliably for me on ants like these. It is essentially a borax and sugar mixture that the ants take into their crop and return it to the nest. Eventually they feed it to the queen, stopping the flow of eggs. The stuff in the white houses usually kills them too quickly -- you want them to live and give it to the other ants in the colony.

One caveat here is that, for some types of ants (Pharaoh), their colony will splinter if it is stressed. So one colony may turn into many colonies, each with a queen, at the first sign of danger. Using liquid baits on these types of ants will actually make your problem worse.

If you go with Terro, resist the urge to do anything to the ants while they are going to town on the bait. It's going to look bad, but they need to return to the colony.

Another solution, if you want to find all of the open spaces in your house, is to puff diatomaceous earth into these spaces. It's pulverized diatoms and looks and feels like talcum powder to humans. To insects, though, it is like walking across glass and acts as a mechanical insecticide.

Both of these options are relatively non-toxic to humans and pets.

That is fascinating. Growing up we called these sugar ants or kitchen ants. I can't read the article but I assume this is similar.

Do you know why they are averse to diatomaceous earth? They are so small I would not have thought they would experience a tactile aversion to a material. Nature is so neat.

Edit: I see now. It's not an aversion. It sticks to them and get into their joints. Interesting.

Yes, the powder cuts their exoskeleton and they perish from dehydration. It sounds like an awful way to go, but I'll do it if that's what it takes to keep them out of my kitchen.

As for diatomaceous earth, it works best in dry places. If it gets wet they can walk right over it without issue, or it will just wash away in the rain. It's also an ingredient in toothpaste and is included in animal feed to allegedly kill parasites. The research on that seems to be propped up by those invested in selling the stuff, though, so take that with a grain of salt.

Nature is really quite incredible. This blew my mind when I saw it, and it unravels a lot of the mystery behind ant locomotion: https://i.imgur.com/7Zh6Im5.gif -- It's so simple, but it works amazingly well.

We use DE in our chicken coops as a treatment against mites.

I can see that being useful since it's external. The things that I saw and questioned were feeding it to cows to kill internal parasites.

> mystery behind ant locomotion: https://i.imgur.com/7Zh6Im5.gif

This is awesome. They walk like us, but instead of two legs they use two tripods.

Terro has worked well for me on the east coast, but was pretty unimpressive in southern California. I assumed it was probably the decentralized Argentine megacolony thing, but we could conceivably have had splintering colonies. The only things that sort of worked were physical barriers and tightly sealing all our food. We even had an incident with a peanut butter jar, though making sure to screw the lid down seems to have prevented repeats. It was an old, porous house, so really blocking them was tough, and we never fully succeeded. We were convinced we had multiple colonies inside our walls.

One trick with Terro: the liquid can be messy if you're not careful. Honestly it seems to wander out: maybe ants are tracking it out? Anyway, it helps to sit the thing inside a ziploc bag, with a bridge of paper towel or something to help the ants find it. It makes cleanup way easier.

It's also possible that the formula they used has changed -- my bottles are several years old now.

The stuff that I used was a small bottle with waxed cardboard "targets" to place it on. You can use waxed paper as well, and I've never had a problem with it running out onto the floor.

Yes, they have a navigation council(NAVCO) and a security council(OPSEC) at loggerheads over a new proposed route. The queen really doesnt care and has left governance to the council. All she wants is food supplies to not drop.

So your RAID murder spree has caused quite a few problems.

Needless to say, everyone in the colony is feeling a little antsy.

I think Aliens, if they exist, will be viewing/treating Humans as tiny Ants;

with ants

Do you want (pictures of) ants?

Because that is how you get (pictures of) ants.

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