Crazy ants take on fire ants and win | Hacker News Reader

Crazy ants take on fire ants and win

arstechnica.com

120 pointsjusben136959 comments

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...

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.

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. :-)

I could have sworn I dealt with these guys in Costa Rica when I lived there, in the Guanacaste area. The ants were way bigger, though, and only a certain percentage of the ants that flooded into our house at night had that crazy, irratic movement, but I had never seen anything like that before. They only came in bunches at night for the most part - getting up to go to the bathroom at night, you'd have to watch your step for sure, though the ants were pretty cool about leaving once you got there. It was definitely something we had to get used to, but after a couple months it was almost like we just had ants as an extra roommate who helped clean out the bugs in the house at night. It was quite a sight to see the `crazy` ones - they literally looked as if the some predator injected a toxin into them that was eating away their brain, causing them to frantically dart about in weird directions. I couldn't imagine having these things infest my house and crawl all over my feet during the day.

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.

"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?

Veering off-topic, your quote reminds me of Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next":

We'll try to be serene and calm

When Alabama gets the bomb.

Formic acid, whose name comes from the Latin word for ant, formica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formic_acid

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

Weird, I took an antacid and it was good.

*eyeroll :)

"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.

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/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.

Also, I live close to the Bay Area so they could be coming for you next!

Lucky for you, and the SF Bay Area, those aren't crazy ants =)

I hope you are right, but how can you tell? They seem to match all the characteristics. They don't march in lines, they go all over the place and they love electronics. I'm at work all day and almost don't eat at home at all so there is no food around the house. These things just love my electronics.

If they are, they would be the furthest north sighting of them so far[0]. Notably, the ants in your video don't actually move like rasberry crazy ants but they appear more like a normal disturbed ant nest. It's hard to describe how unusual coming across them is, but take a look at this video for how they look when you encounter them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgUOufiQw6M (ignore pretty much everything the video author says =)

You're more likely dealing with something like a Pharaoh ant, which are fairly common in your area.

[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Reported_distribution_of_t...

We had pharaoh ants for a long time. Whatever you do, DO NOT SPRAY THEM. If you do, they will divide the colonies and come back later in hoards.

Use bait traps, so that once the scouts regurgitate food into the other ants they all for together.

they definitely don't move that fast. Thanks! :)

Cover your electronics vents with women's leg stockings. I believe I read the crazy ants are attracted to the heat, then when one dies it leaves an odor which attracts more of the crazy ants, until your electronics are full of dead ants.

You need bait traps. Spraying won't work. The best information I found (for a carpenter ant problem) was from the University of Kentucky.

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef619.asp

Although for the big jobs I get the real poison from epestsupply.com, I've had luck with the stuff at the local home hardware store also. It might be a place to start while you wait for your 'Special reserve' to come in.

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.

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

ok, i will not use it for baking

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... ?

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.

interesting, just googled:

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/homemade-ant-killer-boric-acid-...

"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.

I use talc and or boric acid.

I had a really bad ant problem with sugar ants a few months ago. I used a bait called terro that is actually just borax and sugar water. Mine were coming from the wall somewhere, and coming up under the carpet, I put the baits underneath the carpet and it took about a week but finally I have not seen a single ant since then. You have to resist spraying them, and let the baits work. Once they find them, there will be a lot of them as they mill around the bait and eat it, and bring it back to their nest, where everyone eats it, and then dies.

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.

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

I don't have the stats on this one and would think it is going to be a pain to get them because who is keeping track of failures of infrastructure and electronics repairs / replacements? The death / injury stats are pretty easy to get.

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.

The main thing that's "better" about them seems to be that they rarely sting humans. But they appear to be considerably more troublesome for infrastructure.

Yeah, up until that point I was going "yeah! Overthrow the european invaders!"

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

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.

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

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.

I think what they are doing is repeatedly stinging, but the stingers are very small and you can't see them.

So when you see one ant touch another with the abdomen you are probably actually seeing the fight.

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

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.

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...

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)

> 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.

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. "

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

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.

Yet another reason to stay away from the southeast.

>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?

> 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... (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."

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.

Reminds me of Leiningen Versus the Ants http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/lvta.html

Does anything eat these ants in South America?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anteater

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.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-banded_armadillo

Of course, the existing population here in Texas doesn't seem to be making much of a dent.

Armadillos tend to avoid densely (human-)inhabited areas, and have a habit of ending up roadkill when they violate that preference, so they aren't that effective at pest control in urban areas. Maybe they do more in rural areas; not sure.

So the best ant control might be safe armadillo road crossings. I'm sure some infrared cameras, pattern recognition and traffic lights at some hot spots would help.

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.

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