Hacker News Reader

Comment by moomoo11 | Hacker News Reader

Ants are hella cute. Sometimes I would get ants coming into my home, and it was fun watching them try to find food somewhere. I tried to keep it clean. Were these the recon teams sent to find stuff?

Sometimes I’d bring them to my desk and it was cool hanging out with some ants. I eventually caved and bought some sugar cubes. They seemed to LOVE them. I chipped them into smaller chunks, and watching ants yeet them on their “shoulders” and carry it back home was so cool.

Then somehow they’d just not show up again for many months. But I was always glad when I’d start seeing them come back.

Why are they so cute :o

View on HN

This comment makes me wonder if there is an ant equivalent of toxoplasmosis which makes one think that cats are irresistibly cute

I think what you're saying is an urban legend. Do you have a credible source for the statement that toxoplasmosis makes one think cats are incredibly cute?

Cats ARE incredibly cute, so toxoplasmosis actually helps you perceive reality more accurately.

I think it's hyperbole of this: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.13777

Easier for example in Spanish: hormiga, awww. So cute, and it’s even close to amigo. Ants should be friends. I actually feel we are in it together against the cockroaches and spiders.

Ants are the only bugs I dont mind having around. Sometimes I get hundreds of them in my kitchen and sometimes just sit and watch them lol

Depends on the kind of ants and where they are. Some ants have quite a potent sting, and I once had a bed full of ants, even if there were the harmless kind, I didn't particularly appreciate having dozens of ants crawling on me at night.

Note: for the latter, I lived in an RV at that time, the bed was literally at arms reach from the kitchen. I tried to use insecticide gel, which ended up making the problem worse, as I now had dying and crazy ants falling down from the ceiling. Turned out the source of infestation was a dirty bike bag that ants turned into a colony, throwing it out solved the problem.

I found it's easier to like them once I viewed them as nature's janitors.

Given how much you liked hanging with ants, I recommend you try spiders in a garden. Look for a spider web where one is hanging, toss a small piece of debris that breaks a little of the web, and watch in awe how they repair it.

Haha. Not a huge fan of spiders, if I see one in my home I’ll catch him and put him outside.

Idk why but I feel really bad for critters. I’m in SF next to a park.

Every morning on my walk if I see a pill bug, a worm or caterpillar, or some other critter on the side walk I’ll grab a leaf and put them back in the park. Don’t want them to get squished :(

Back to spiders tho. I had jumping spiders in my last apartment. Had a really pretty patterned one in my office that would turn and face me whenever I moved. It lived in my blinds for a few weeks and then I never saw it again :(

Had some pet silverfish too. I have a TON of moleskines and I’d feed them old pages.

Sorry I’m probably weird for loving all these little “pests” but I find them really wonderful.

I rarely go through this part of the basement, I spilled about a table spoon of water on the floor and I come back 10 minutes later and a giant 7cm leg span Wolf spider was drinking from the newly formed puddle. Now I make sure there is plenty of water available in the basement.

I would hunt for my friend spider. Find an ant, throw it into the net, watch how quickly spider friend descends right to the spot and spins it into a take-out container.

Really only works with live victims. If they died before I threw them on the web, the spiders usually wouldn’t recognize from the vibrations that there was food at that grid location. I did trick a spider once with a pine needle, tapping/shaking the body of the dead prey until I got lucky and the spider came. Usually this didn’t work though, tripping whatever heuristic the spiders used was tricky.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com