Honey ant queens share a throne | Hacker News Reader

Honey ant queens share a throne

bbc.co.uk

42 pointsnarad7 comments

Another factoid on ants: typically, when a person spots an ant inside their residence, they assume the worst. They fear a swarming, thriving ant colony is breeding inside their home.

This is almost never the case.

Most species of ants live in hollow trees, logs, landscaping timbers, and soil, and will march hundreds of metres from their colony in search of food.

If you see ants in your home, there's no need to napalm your carpets or use traps and poisons. Have compassion. Keeping your floors clear of carbohydrate rich foods will keep most ants busy looking elsewhere.

And for the odd ant scout that goes walking by? Look the other way. They're not the enemy. They are your friend. They are a part of nature.

I've always wondered... how much of these nature documentaries are shot in the wild, and how much is shot in a controlled environment? From the write-up I presume that the outside shot of the queens working together was 'real' -- but when the camera pans down, is that some kind of artificial ant farm?

I would say yes, most likely an artificial ant farm. I learned recently from a documentary director friend of mine that this is done very often. For instance, since a human should really not get too close to a wild cheetah, they would use domestic ones for close up shots, even though the documentary is meant to be in the jungle. Most audiences would not spot the trick, and it would help filmmakers tell their story more fluently. But it of course blurs the line between fiction and documentary.

They can be very fake: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09....

I've wondered that too. One of my favorite I assume was plotted by the film maker, though I've done no research on it, as an insane amount of well-timed events happened. If you're remotely interested in things like this, you owe it to yourself to check out The Besieged Fortress: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV4AaV0AGOA

> Mr Mendez pointed out that, rather than valuing a single sovereign, the worker ants were simply picking off the weakest queens to manage their resources better.

wow that looks like a really good strategy - first the queens help each other out to improve their chances of building a good nest and then they get starved by possibly their own "kids" so that the colony is driven by the strongest queen. The article doesn't provide much detail about how do they select "the weakest link" though

Unfortunately the article doesn't mention kings, but I can identify being starved by your own children. Two college tuitions and a thin-as-a-rail son that can empty the refrigerator in a single meal. j/k

Reply on news.ycombinator.com