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Goons Are Great posted:Ahh, Antstore would be exactly my recommendation by the way, been customer there for years, great guys and great products. I'd highly recommend getting some tools from there, ant specific tweezers for example they have there for a few bucks, as well as the soil as it's perfect for them. I bought a whole collection of stuff from them, all without any problems. Oh man I needed that reality check, I was already busy musing about how to make something that includes mosses and pillbugs and probably a herd of buffalo at the rate I was going. I'll keep it simple. I did assume that since Antstore have only the sizes one queen or 11-25 workers that basically reflected fresh queens from this year who just managed a couple eggs and larvae by now or ones from last year, really cool. I will let them chill in their tube for as long as they want, as a goon I can ofc sympathize with not wanting to move  Can you specify the bit about the humidity? You said earlier that you kept your guys at 85-95%, which seems pretty moist already. That is below what would risk mold? Looking forward to you posting those setups, I've browsed some forums and done some searches and so far I haven't managed to find something like what I was thinking of.
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Aug 2, 2020 17:40
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Apologies for being radio silent, I wasn't at home for a few days and my phone botched two attempts of me writing a solid post here, so I gave up. Now I'm back!Gunshow Poophole posted:Omigosh I went to move a tomato pot today and underneath was like a hundred ants with queen and eggs Depending on whether or not you can tolerate the ants at this spot, you can just leave them be and they'll figure out what to do, but in case you do need to make them move away for any reason, even if it's just for their own safety, you can do carefully and slowly move the pot a tiny bit every now and then, to slowly open the nest up over a day or two. Light will then enter whenever you move it a bit, you can do bigger distances in the dark as they then won't really notice, and they can move out in an orderly manner. Note that it's not good to do this - in general an ant nest should not be touched to avoid any harm - as opening a nest up forces them to move quickly, which isn't amazing, but if that's better than leaving them at that spot or risking danger to them due to the spot, it's a harsh but necessary thing to do. aphid_licker posted:Oh man I needed that reality check, I was already busy musing about how to make something that includes mosses and pillbugs and probably a herd of buffalo at the rate I was going. I'll keep it simple. My big arena that was meant for this purpose ended up as a de facto Vivarium where I do all kinds of things, but never let the ants in, as it in the past two and a half years never was the right setup to make it feasible. However, that's also because I always go crazy on my projects in there and if I would really plan out what to get growing in there instead of trying all sorts of things without a proper plan, that would be an option. I must add that so far I haven't needed this arena either, as my setup for the ants is very modular in its design and I can remove or add parts any time, so there is no rush for me to connect the big arena as long as the ants are happy with the space they have. So, this is my current arena:  From above, you already see a few ants taking a morning shower in the water trough (they unironically do this daily at this time of the day):  It's just about 5mm of dry sand, the holes you see is an underground satellite nest they constructed more or less across the entire tank, a thermometer, a water and honey trough with a properly sized storage tank so that I can leave them be for days, even weeks without it going empty, the small bowl for insects which currently is empty, the tube connecting the nest with the arena and a bowl shaped rock filled with water gel. Originally I had water in that bowl, but the ants could drown in that so I always also used a sponge (you can also use small rocks or something) but I swapped to mixing polyacrylamide with water, as it's stable enough for the ants to even walk on it, or cut out chunks of water and carry it elsewhere, while being liquid enough for them to drink at any time. Water supply is vital for any ant colony, that's why I have two sources just in case one falls dry over me being away or something. This is the nest, I already posted it ITT earlier, with the internal red lighting on:  It's autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC), or Ytong for the brand name in Europe, you can buy it at any hardware store. It is way too hard for ants the chew through, is very stable in temperature both in cold and warm situations, while being almost entirely permeable by air. This allows me to have a very high humidity while keeping the air flow - entirely passive - going and avoid any mold in the nest. Usually you are right, a more reasonable 60-75% is better and also needed in setups like, e.g. a vertical ant farm with no ventilation. in general, ventilation in the nest is vital. The ants like it more humid than it would be healthy for them and mold can - but doesn't have to - turn poisonous for them. Usually in nature this is not a big problem as they can remove it manually by simply cutting it and/or the source of the mold out and throw it out of the nest, but here this translates moving it from the one end of the nest to another, they don't have the space in an enclosed setup to deal with it, so we have to avoid it entirely. How exactly you make ventilation and high humidity a thing, is up to you, it also highly depends on your location (if you're higher up, like, on a mountain or something) you have different values and risks than when you live next to a river, so you just have to figure out what works fine. No worries though, Lasius Niger are extremely adaptable and can deal with almost anything, so they are very forgiving when it comes to mistakes in the setup. In fact, my ants stayed in the test tube for so long that the cotton wool started to mold away and instead of moving out of there, they used the mold to create a separate chamber in the test tube between the rotten and the non-rotten cotton wool and stored eggs there due to the 100% humidity the fungus created. This is not great, as the fungus can start growing on the eggs, cause diseases in the ants or emit poisonous spores when he becomes fertile, but as long as that didn't happen, the ants were happy and just used it as an opportunity. Later on I adjusted the concrete nest and its humidity accordingly, so they moved in voluntarily, then I could take the tube out and throw it away. So you see, if something doesn't work out at first, no worries, they'll handle it. Just make sure you minimize the number of problematic factors (risks of mold, other animals in the enclosure, the type of soil used) etc. just so you stay on top of the ant's activity, for example where they move, and thus can adjust their setup accordingly, learn what works best for you and them and once you got a good feeling of that, you can start expanding into more exciting setups - including offering the ants the ability to herd aphids on their own! If you manage to do that, you even gain independence from feeding them honey etc. and you get to watch them doing what they can do best, which is eat rear end of aphids.  Here's some other impressions of setups you might be interested in, no particular order, ranging from basically free DIY ones up to expensive professional ones:  A rather simple one with a sand arena paired with a cork nest in a glass enclosure.  A desert terrarium setup with a specified nest area in that hill with premade chambers and appropriate desert vegetation.  The same idea but much smaller and in a carved concrete nest to simulate a mountain landscape.  A very cool and super easy setup made out of a wooden log, premade chambers in it and secured in a glass enclosure.  This is a special one, it's a test tube setup placed in a arena that is placed inside of a broken wine glass. There is no further barrier in between you and the ants and this is possible by placing the glass in a bowl filled with water, which the ants will not cross. A very beautiful, but also risky setup, as the ants can drown, small species can walk on the dust that settles on water, swimming ants gently caress you up big time and in general it's not a permanent solution and only useful for the starting months - however, pretty much free to create and very beautiful to look at.  Who said you need an actual formicarium at all? This is a simple round box made out of wood with several layers in between, I believe this one originally was just a sewing supply box. The arena is basically the upper level with the original wooden lid removed, instead secured with simple acrylic glass, the lower levels serve as nest for the ants. In such things you have to be careful how the wood was worked with before doing so, as it might be painted or treated with chemicals that prevent ventilation or can be toxic in longterm. Regular wood boxes work fine, though.  A sophisticated setup made out of plastic in a 3D printer, with specialized chambers and all the fun things. Works out fine, however ventilation might be a problem in this setup - but if you ants like it humid and you do not add anything in that can mold combined with you cleaning up their trash regularly, that works out, too.  A very beautiful setup, where this really, really nice self-made Aztec pyramid made out of porous rock and carved to perfection, with the ants finding premade chambers on each level of the pyramid.  If you really want it cheap and easy, well, here you go! Just the upper part of a bottle, sealed on the ground and covered with soil and the test tube nest is built right into it. Getting the sand is probably the most expensive part here, unless you just take some from the outside.  Cheap you say? How about just some food box? It's opened up to allow ventilation and the blue lid is covered in liquid paraffin, which prevents the ants from climbing out, as they cannot get any grip on the oil. I use this liquid for myself, so I can work in the formicarium without ants crawling all over me - this allows even entirely open setups! You just have to make sure the oil is refreshed every ~two weeks, depending on your room humidity. Just a few examples what you can do with this. As you can see, you can get very creative in how you build your formicarium, either by working on it yourself, or buying professional equipment from a reptile or specific ant shop or by mixing both together to achieve something you and they like! I'd be very excited to hear what you want to go with. If you want to get a little crazy in your setup without endangering stuff with other animals etc. in it, you can use almost ANYTHING for decoration. Artificial resin is absolutely perfect for ants, they won't damage it and it's not poisonous and every pet store has some nice decorative things made out of that - you can also without any problem use artificial plants in the beginning, for the ants it's just another object with no interest to them. For Lasius Niger you can use almost any non-poisonous material you want for decoration, except maybe soil, as they will use that for digging purposes. Plastic, wood, gypsum, artificial resin, concrete, rock, whatever goes. A starter formicarium does not have to lack any style!
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Aug 4, 2020 13:04
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Also sorry from me, I couldn't really do ant stuff this week and I didn't want to just post "acknowledged". Those are some amazing setups. I kinda really want it to look nice so it's not just this contraption in my room. I came into some free antstore ant arenas, two big ones and one small one, currently trying to figure out a solution for the actual nest, how to connect everything, how to do moisturizing, and how to keep the setup transportable so I can eventually bring everything to whatever overwintering spot I settle on. I also bought a hygrometer and a Pinzette . Hope this is not a weird question, but you've been incredibly generous with your time in answering my very basic questions, can I donate to some cause for you? Or send something from antstore to your local Kneipe or whatever privacy-preserving solution you prefer?
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Aug 8, 2020 17:05
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I think you are pretty safe in terms of nest with just using the test tube they already live in! Just take an arena or two you like and design however you want (at best, in the beginning, not too big, they don't love too open spaces when young as it appears dangerous for them) and place the test tube in there. Water, honey and protein food not too far off the tube and there you go! If you go for a more modular design, like antstore usually suggests with all their connecting parts and separate arenas and tubes, you can expand at any time and offer them another nest once they settled in your arena(s). Lasius Niger are very content with how they live and won't move anytime quickly unless they have to. For hibernation purposes, having them in that test tube (or a fresh one you can offer anytime, make sure the water tank is full enough, that is absolutely vital) is even super duper chill, as you can just seal the entrance to the tube - which they will do on their own as soon as October comes around the corner and it's getting cool, which you can simulate in the transition period between Your Room and The Fridge (or where ever you keep them for winter) - and then just put the test tube in a box or carton or something with some paper around and put that into the hibernation station. That way you don't have to figure out moving the entire setup with arena etc and you only need, like, 5cm of space in the winter area. The ants will not attempt to leave the nest while sleeping and will not accept any food, so sleeping in the test tube is a very efficient thing to do. Fits in every fridge, garage, basement, mountain top, where ever you want them to sleep after all. Worked fine for me by the way, too, I just had them in my fridge drawer for 5 months and they slept between apples and oranges! Also that is very generous of you, but no worries, posting about ants is my passion and seeing a new ant keeper to rise between the humans and swarm the world with new ants is warming my heart already! Also I'm planning to buy some antstore stuff for like a month now and never find anything I actually need, so I'm pretty full on everything. Ants are just too low effort to collect all the shiny things.
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Aug 9, 2020 11:50
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Okay great! I have two big arenas from an acquaintance that I connected, seems like they can just avoid the open if they don't want to go there, and I'll figure out where to put the tube when I get it and see what it looks like - either into the arena or maybe tucked into a length of tube hooked up to one of the side - the tube I got is thick enough to put a normal test tube into. I'll let the whole thing stand for a couple weeks to see how the humidity and mold situation develops - I put a bit of wood in there because I liked how it looks, if that molds at the humidity I'm going for I'll toss it. And if everything seems to be stable two weeks from now I'll order some guys. The whole setup is attached onto a piece of wood, so I'll move them to the attic or basement and hope that it doesn't get too warm there. Dumb question: how do the ants handle overwintering outside? Antwiki seems to think that it's very important that they should overwinter at 0-5C from Oct-Mar, but last winter we didn't ever really consistently dip that low: https://www.wetter.com/wetter_aktuell/rueckblick/deutschland/freiburg-im-breisgau/DE0003016.html?sid=10803&timeframe=1y Does this mean that normal ants here already are super stressed by climate change? e: think the attic is out, when the sun shines on there it's gonna get really warm. Last winter was nuts here. Looks like your fridge solution is probably the safest bet. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Aug 12, 2020 |
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Aug 12, 2020 01:52
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Related question what happens to species designed to hibernate if the temperature never goes that low? Are all ant species in Australia non-hibernating ones?
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Aug 12, 2020 04:46
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If your general arena setup is dry and you don't end up spraying regularly, there is practically zero risk for mold, even with wood involved. That's why focusing on keeping the nest moist (the test tube is always at almost 100% inside as long as there's water in the tank behind the cotton wool) is all you need to do and the Arena can turn into a desert without any problem. My arena is currently at brutal 33% humidity and it's fine, while the nest is at 90%. In fact, just yesterday I noticed the ants were panic moving brood around because I forgot to water the nest and it dropped to 70% in this current heat mixed with dry air, when I went up to 90% again they chilled. So this is clear proof that they like it very moist on the nest and don't care about the humidity in the arena at all. In terms of hibernation, a steady temperature isn't the problem, the total temperature reached is. Hibernating ant species do mostly not go to sleep based on the outside temperature, they go to sleep regardless of the temperature. They, however, rely on the temperature to tell them when to wake up. They are cool with going to bed at 15°C, their chronobiology dictates them to do so, but they will wake up a few days later when it stays at this temperature. So the temperature absolutely needs to be low and stay low (below 10°C) for the winter, else they will wake up and move, believing it's spring. It's not an issue if the sun is shining on the nest in December and it gets warm for a few hours, they won't toss their sleep for this, but as soon as it stays on this level for two or three days, they'll start moving and working again. Climate change is indeed loving with this. Last winter you could already see ants moving around in, say, November and December, I even caught some ants moving through the one day of snow we had last year. They go to bed as soon as the temperature goes down again, which luckily still happens for the most part, but winter here is getting shorter, warmer, wetter and more problematic and in a way too short time frame for any species to adapt. Adaptable species like lasius figured that they could just simulate winter even if it's warm and they can be seen carrying in snow or cold and wet stones or whatever into the nest nowadays, also they sometimes bring in huge amounts of water and spray it all over the ants and nest so the heat can't be stored well and the nest gets artificially cooler and they can sleep. This is specialized behavior we couldn't see just 20 years ago. Other species, like Formica in Europe, are having huge problems due to this. Their ant hills store heat well and they are way too large to cool it down artificially, so they tend to wake up more often. This is a massive loss of energy and puts the workers who wake up and start working on a death clock, as their biology is not made for this. They need this winter break, as their entire energy consumption is focused on having a break, which means being comparably wasteful jn activity and energy management throughout the year. If the break doesn't happen or is interrupted too often, they'll just die. We lost many Formica nests due to this, plus the reckless use of pesticides, loss of habitat in forests and invasive species fighting them and this is the main reason wood ants across the world are now endangered. Chances are, many of those species will be gone forever in 80 years, even in the most optimistic climate change scenario. The most pessimistic ones sees them gone from at least Europe and all temperate zones in the near 20 to 30 years tops. Just a other insects who require hibernation in order to function, climate change is hitting them extremely hard and is doing so now, and that's a big, big reason why we lost so many insects in the past 30 years, along with pesticides and other factors of us loving them up. Organza Quiz posted:Are all ant species in Australia non-hibernating ones? No, not all of them, but none of them require to sleep. Hibernation in ants, and most insects, can be categorized in three levels: Homodynamic species Quasi-heterodynamic species True heterodynamic species. Homodynamic are species without any break, they compensate their way of life due to a massive overflow of food, as we find it all the time in tropical parts of the world. Temperature rarely changes across the seasons, in true tropical forests there are no seasons at all but daily changes, and they cannot and will not ever sleep. If it gets too cold for some reason, they'll freeze to death. Quasi-heterodynamic species are not specialized or requiring to sleep, they can go all the way through like homodynamic ones, but they are somewhat bound to seasonal changes. During winter, they lower their activity a bit, don't eat as much, stop laying new eggs, but take care of the existing brood. If the winter gets very warm, they'll go back to full production, if the winter gets too cold, they lose a bunch of brood and workers, but as long as it's in a certain frame it's fine, they can recover immediately and go back to work the minute it's warm enough. Many species in Australia fit in this category, except for really hot areas that never really go below 10°C, those are always homodynamic. True heterodynamic species always hibernate in some way, they start preparing for this in September/May for the southern hemisphere and are able to go into a full sleep, called Diapause, where they don't do anything at all and just sleep all the way through. In this category we also separate endogenous and exogenous heterodynamic species. The latter are hibernating facultative, meaning they are only relying on the external temperature. They prepare for winter in autumn, but will not go to sleep until the temperature goes low enough. If it never goes low enough, fine, then they won't sleep. These species can afford this lifestyle only because their workers do not grow very old and only because they have figured out a way to have a steady flow of food around, like Messor, who are baker ants and can rely on their ant bread throughout the year. These species are mostly living in subtropical areas, southern Europe and such. Endogenous heterodynamic species do not have this luxury of choice, their hibernation is obligatory. The entire biological setup and energy management is built like in an hourglass. External temperature can delay the timing on when to sleep and when to be awake, but they will always go to sleep at some point, even if it's still warm. If it stays warm then, they'll wake up again and are super confused and waste a ton of energy, then they will go back go sleep as soon as it's remotely cold enough. Sleeping during winter is the act of flipping the hourglass around and if that doesn't happen, it cannot continue. Almost all temperate species belong in this category and they are rewarded with extraordinary long worker lives, efficient nest management and the ability to make it through extremely cold winters in the past, when we had those.
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Aug 12, 2020 11:23
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Oh god okay I seriously thought the whole thing had to be 100%. I desperately need to do a lot more reading. Thank you very much! This guy has a long-term log of a lasius niger colony without overwintering, albeit at an extreme constant 24C throughout, it doesn't seem to go great for them but it definitely shows what you talked about regarding that they try to sort of overwinter despite the high temp: https://ameiseninfos.de/html/lasius_o__winterruhe.html
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Aug 12, 2020 14:56
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aphid_licker posted:Oh god okay I seriously thought the whole thing had to be 100%. I desperately need to do a lot more reading. Thank you very much! Oh no no no no, it is very very vital to offer various climates across the setup! Don't forget, you are not just keeping a pet here, you're trying to simulate a whole world for them. The weather can sometimes be humid, sometimes dry, sometimes hot, sometimes cold, always potentially dangerous. Think about ant keeping like playing sim city. You try to make it work, but you also would like to have a functioning, at best nice looking city. It's up to you how big or small you make it, but you got to make sure all needs are fulfilled and it's at least somewhat realistic. The arena is the outer world for them and it's fine to have the atmosphere there be the same as your regular room climate, or even the outside. In fact, there are setups with tubes etc where the arena can even literally be outside and thus subject to the naturally changing climate and weather. Only focus on the nest and its values in terms of temperature and humidity. As long as the arena stays livable, so not turning into an oven or a freezer, it can swing around freely and does not have to be different at all. At least not for Lasius and in general temperate ants since you already live in a temperate area. Of course desert/tropical/etc ants need different values in their outworld, as for them you don't just have to simulate any world, but their natural world which does not exist here. In the tropical world obviously you have to do the exact opposite in order to keep temperate ants. aphid_licker posted:This guy has a long-term log of a lasius niger colony without overwintering, albeit at an extreme constant 24C throughout, it doesn't seem to go great for them but it definitely shows what you talked about regarding that they try to sort of overwinter despite the high temp: https://ameiseninfos.de/html/lasius_o__winterruhe.html
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Aug 12, 2020 16:59
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OP, I enjoyed your responses over in Stupid/Small Questions about the goon with the dishwasher ants. I was putzing around A/T today and saw your post here. Well, a few hours and five pages later, I have decided that ANTS ARE COOL AS gently caress. Questions! 1. You mentioned ants sleeping, vs being inactive. How can you tell the difference? I'm a huge fish nerd, as my username implies, and I always wondered about that with my piscine friends. With fish, particularly the bigger, more intelligent types like cichlids, it seemed pretty obvious when they would lower themselves to the tank bottom, fold their fins, and be inert save for their gill flaps a'flappin'. Do ants, like, rest their antennae, or...? 2. I was set to ask a thousand questions when I read about baker ants (I cook for a living, so this intrigued me immensely), but most were already answered. Any good vid clips someone can recommend? And have people eaten this ant bread? I want to know what it tastes like. Which brings me to a suggestion: This thread reminded me of a great sci-fi short story by Bruce Sterling titled "Swarm". http://www.sfsfss.com/stories/Swarm.html It's from his Shaper/Mech series. All you really need to know as background is: future humans have mostly divided into two factions: Shapers (who use biological/organic enhancements and general DNA fuckery to advance their side) and Mechanists (who are all about tech/inorganic implants and becoming cyborgs, if not outright machines). Humans have just really started living in space and are trying to cope with dealing with alien life forms now aware that we aren't just stick-throwing monkeys. Anyways, I ended up re-reading the story today thanks to this thread, and recommend it to anyone interesting in what Giant Ants In Space might be like. Many things like the mimics, symbiotes, eating regurgitated fungus (ANT BREAD), caste systems... it's a good read if this sort of thing interests you.
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Aug 12, 2020 22:11
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JacquelineDempsey posted:OP, I enjoyed your responses over in Stupid/Small Questions about the goon with the dishwasher ants. I was putzing around A/T today and saw your post here. Well, a few hours and five pages later, I have decided that ANTS ARE COOL AS gently caress. You cannot really tell the difference from outside, at least not easily, but the antennae are a good start. Ants only sleep and chill in their nest, which naturally is dark and needs to be dark, so their antennae and haptic senses for vibrations are the only thing they got in there. A resting ant will just sit somewhere, move the antenna every now and then to check if something's up and sits still afterwards. Sometimes the move their leg a little, but most notably they will react differently to light. As ants have no eye lids, they always can perceive regular light minus red with their main eyes and bright/dark differences using their ocellus on top of their head. A resting ant will react immediately if stuff turns bright, even if it's red light, as the regular eyes cannot see that, but the ocelli can as it's only perceiving the difference between absence or presence of light in general. This way ants can also see UV light, theoretically even other electromagnetic radiation, by the way, although it's not clear to what extent. A sleeping ant will still react moderately quickly, but not as fast and not as surprised. They usually stumble around for a bit and wiggle the antennae immediately to smell what's going on, but they won't start to run or work like fully awake ants will. Nesting ants are always photophobic and thus will be scared of any light entering the nest. JacquelineDempsey posted:2. I was set to ask a thousand questions when I read about baker ants (I cook for a living, so this intrigued me immensely), but most were already answered. Any good vid clips someone can recommend? And have people eaten this ant bread? I want to know what it tastes like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yExGzeeuqIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ5k1r3ziz4 The baker ants, which you can distinguish from the others via their large head and massive baker mandibles, often stack up their dough together to a pile and chew on it altogether as it's more efficient and results in bigger pieces of bread, which they then can carry around the nest in larger quantities. Usually the queen and the larvae get their own loafs delivered straight to their mouths, so it's better to have some large ones available. I haven't tasted it, but read from someone who did, plus the chemistry behind it is fairly simple, as it's pretty much the same thing we do with our bread. It apparently tastes like a mix of sweet dough and nuts, also it's relatively moist. That's because the ants break down the seeds to make that flour and then mix it with their saliva to make the dough, which so far is pretty much the same we do with our bread, only that we usually use water (but saliva is almost entirely water anyways, so it wouldn't be much of a difference, chemically speaking) which causes the flour to combine to a mass. The digestive solutions mixed in the saliva, for the most part it's the same stuff we have in our saliva, too, breaks down the cellulose and starch to less complex polysaccharides and monosaccharides, most notably glucose, or simply sugar as you know it. That's where the sweet taste comes from, basically ants do what we do when chewing on bread, too, only already at the baking stage. The nut taste is most likely just the remaining seeds and nut is probably very generalized here, it depends on what seed it was. As the ants also separate and clean their collected seeds, there is a wide variety of ant bread available for all the different tastes and they do vary from ant to ant in what bread they like the most, which is why the baker ants often make truckloads of different bread or mix it together to a hybrid bread that offers something for everyone. By the way, we humans may be lacking the enzymes in the ant saliva to make proper dough out of seeds, but we do share the enzymes to break down cellulose and starch from those seeds. You can try what it sort of should taste like if you delegate the baking part to our regular baking methods and eat regular bread, but instead of just chewing and swallowing, take a chunk of any bread and chew on it for an absurdly long time. After a few minutes, you will start to taste a slowly increasing sweetness on your tongue. That's your saliva's enzymes breaking up starch into glucose. As the glucose is what both we and the ants are after when it comes to gaining energy out of food, you can get a similar experience this way without being an ant! This works best for unsalted and yeast free bread, by the way, as the yeast already eats up a ton of the stuff inside to grow and fart. Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Aug 13, 2020 |
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Aug 13, 2020 10:46
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Goons Are Great posted:Very interesting! Not cool as the ants certainly suffer from it, but the scientific details are very fascinating. You see, they can tolerate stuff in general, but you still need to follow their biological setup to make them really happy.
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Aug 13, 2020 18:47
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A picture I took today that fits here maybe
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Aug 15, 2020 04:38
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https://askkrenko.tumblr.com/post/626831154950144000/the-original-post-gets-lots-of-attention-which-is
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Aug 19, 2020 22:57
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That's amazing. I love ants. Mine have started another big building project by filling up their water bowl with earth and then constructing chambers in the resulting wet soil. Quite clever, but they didn't factor in that at some point that water will dissipate as somehow the magical event that makes the bowl wet again did not happen. Because I didn't want to flood the new chamber. They even seem to realize that this was the result of their action and removed the soil, which led to me filling it with water again. I wonder if I'm training them or they are training me now.
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Aug 19, 2020 23:42
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ants are so fukkin cool
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Aug 19, 2020 23:47
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Is that why anthills start popping up everywhere when it rains? They only build wet soil?
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Aug 19, 2020 23:47
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Depends on the kind of ant hill, many are made out of wood or from twigs and stuff, but in general dry soil is dusty and annoying to work with, as the ants don't have hands to take up the stuff but carry it in compressed chunks of soil in their mandibles. Compressing that works best when it's wet, so usually they don't bother trying to dig or construct stuff until it's wet and then they get to work and only spend a few hours all at once before something huge and impressive has been built. I experimented around with that in my usually dry arena, as I put some drops of water on the one half but nothing at all on the other half. Half a night later they have constructed tunnels across half of the arena. When I also made the other half wet they expanded that into an underground ant highway they spread across the entire arena, as a backup nest in case stuff at home goes sideways and also to deal with food (which I serve in there) safely without having to carry it all the way home.
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Aug 19, 2020 23:59
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I believe I recall hearing that honey ants are eaten in some parts of the world, googling it says indigenous Australians do. Are there any other ant species that are eaten by humans? Have you ever tasted ant?
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Aug 20, 2020 11:47
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Can ants harden the soil they dig in? The used arenas I got were caked with a centimetre of what seemed like sorta spongy concrete, ie they had built tunnels throughout the substrate and it had somehow hardened
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Aug 20, 2020 12:18
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ninjewtsu posted:I believe I recall hearing that honey ants are eaten in some parts of the world, googling it says indigenous Australians do. Are there any other ant species that are eaten by humans? Have you ever tasted ant? Oh yes, those honeypot ants are like nature's candy for them. There are some other ants that get eaten regularly, there's even a gin produced where the stuff gets filtered through ants to get some sour flavor in it. In the Amazon there are ants that actively use chemically produced herbicides to kill off plants around them in order to grow a symbiotic plant that they then live in. Those ants often get picked up by indigenous people around that area and eaten raw as the acid and venom the ants use to kill the plants tastes very sour and has a salty component, so they can use the ants as condiment. In Africa sometimes army ants get trapped, killed and then grilled as protein rich food. Their tendency to march in dense armies make it easy to collect a lot of them in a short time, the ants are relatively large in general and the pupae the ants carry along them are like living nuts that you can snack. I have eaten a few dead ants, yeah, they hardly taste like anything. Ants do not produce fat in any way, their biology and active lifestyle lead to a very low density of simple carbohydrates so they're mostly made out of proteins and polysaccharides, which adds up to a digestive value comparable to mammal meat, just with less fat which leads to low to no taste. The strongest taste you get from the subfamily formicinae as those ants produce formic acid in their abdomen which tastes very sour due to its extremely low pH-value. aphid_licker posted:Can ants harden the soil they dig in? The used arenas I got were caked with a centimetre of what seemed like sorta spongy concrete, ie they had built tunnels throughout the substrate and it had somehow hardened
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Aug 20, 2020 12:42
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Goons Are Great posted:Sure thing, for one they usually use already hardened or wet soil and restructure it, as their mandibles are best used to cut through hard stuff. If the finished product starts to crumble or turn wet again they can lick it and harden it that way when it turns dry again, or they bring in water and splash it all over the place so it can harden the stuff that way. It's an essential part of nest maintenance to do this and make sure the constructed chambers stay hardened and stable, not just for general stability of the nest but also to provide a stable humidity and temperature inside. Well I'm extremely impressed, that stuff was not at all easy to get out.
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Aug 20, 2020 13:15
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Oh you'll have to deal with that every now and then heh. My ants always construct a bunker around the honey trough to protect it from predators and thieves and I always have a hard time opening that up to fill up the honey. They do the same thing with the water trough and even dig in the insect food bowl so I always feel like I have to tear apart their constructions just in order to keep this somewhat clean and refill it. I seriously considered implementing a tube system or something so I can refill stuff without doing so, but I have to clean the plastic parts regularly to avoid algae and fungi growth so eeeehhhhh Tell me if you ever find a solution to this lol
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Aug 20, 2020 13:23
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The android game thread just suggested pocket ants: colony simulator https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ariel.zanyants I grew up on simant so.. I might give it a try this weekend.
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Aug 20, 2020 16:37
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Oh please report back if you do, I'm very curious about this but I'm concerned about ad walls or in game shop stuff because I'm traumatized in terms of apps and I can't be bothered to check myself because I'm a lazy gently caress
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Aug 20, 2020 17:23
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Goons Are Great posted:Oh please report back if you do, I'm very curious about this but I'm concerned about ad walls or in game shop stuff because I'm traumatized in terms of apps and I can't be bothered to check myself because I'm a lazy gently caress I already have decent blocking on my openwrt router and browsers, but this stuff is supposed to be perfect. On 2nd thought that wouldn't let me test it for you, would just work on my end.
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Aug 20, 2020 20:32
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Nah still works, if you can tell me it's a super great ant game I might be starting ad block poo poo myself, but usually ant games aren't too amazing so I'm skeptical if it's worth the effort. Usually I don't use ad having games or buy them straight up so I rarely need to block those things, but maybe this is worth it.
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Aug 20, 2020 22:44
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Do we know how ants store information? Like it was detailed earlier in the thread how ants can learn, but when they figure out that, say, putting soil in the water bowl makes water stop coming, where is the "brain" that that information is stored in? It's not like every ant has all of that information right?
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Aug 20, 2020 22:55
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We do not! The neurobiology of insects in general is almost entirely a mystery. The best researched insect and one of the best researched living being in general next to the bacteria Escherichia coli, is the fruit fly Drosophila Melanogaster, the vinegar fly. Almost all detailed biochemical knowledge we have come from them but due to the distance of the order of flies (Diptera) to the family of ants (Formicidae) inside of the order Hymenoptera it is very likely that ants might function very different to flies. Their distance to each other is comparable to how close we humans (family Hominidae) are towards, say, the order Carnivora, the order of dogs and cats, only even several levels deeper down. What we do know about fly neurobiology is that on the easiest summary imaginable, their way to store information is similar to how we do it: chemical and anatomical structures work together to form a neurobiological representation of a memory that can grow in size and be used to access stored information. However, they do not do it compressed in one big brain, but every ganglion has their own memory spot and it is very possible to have the same memory represented multiple times across the decentralized nervous system. It seems that this is even necessary, as duplicate entries appear to enhance the ability to work with the information. Their entire setup is fundamentally different to us in terms of chemicals and structures used and it's using a lot less moving sorts in between, which either hints towards a more efficient and advanced memory, or a simpler one that cannot store as much information. Intuitively most people would probably assume the latter given that it's flies and ants we're talking about, but I cannot stress enough how wrong this may be and that we do not have any proof for this. The entire process is incredibly complex and mostly a mystery, so assuming a certain capacity is nothing but guessing. Note that I super duper simplified here, I hardly understand the neurobiological basics myself. Now, in terms of hive mind information, this is entirely unknown. We are not aware how the colony can know stuff as a singular entity consisting out of many ants, but we do know that they are able to do so. Colonies react widely different to the same problem if dealing with it multiple times, even if there's a lot of time, even years, in between. Even if all ants are replaced over time by new ants and the old ones dying over years, the colony still is able to access stored information from the past and use them properly. There does not seem to be ant classes, they most certainly don't write stuff into ant books and we are also not aware of memory chambers they construct, so it's nebulous how on earth they do this. Ants communicate and think a lot using their environment using a method called stigmergy (a changing environment stimulates a reaction in another individual), so maybe they store information in the way they structure and, this is important, permanently change their nest. An ant nest is never static, it's a dynamic system where the nest workers and the foraging ants that leave it change stuff all the time. If I check my nest today and make a picture, it will look different tomorrow. It seems possible that they can efficiently use this ability to delegate information storage into their surroundings and maybe construct a sort of external hive memory this way. If it's true, how it works exactly, how effective this is and whether or not that's more than just a random theory, we cannot tell. There is no doubt, however, that there is a lot more going on inside of an ant colony and in their ant minds than we intuitively think.
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Aug 20, 2020 23:25
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Man if it turned out that these guys store information in their nest layout that would basically be the craziest thing I've ever heard
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Aug 21, 2020 01:26
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That seems like the kind of thing you could test by moving all the ants to a new hive. Do ants retain memory when they migrate their nest? In a situation like that nuclear bunker where ants kept falling into the sealed chamber and survived through cannibalism from earlier in the thread, do the separated ants retain memory? Do supercolonies transport information across large distances?
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Aug 21, 2020 02:23
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If they move to a new nest they definitely remember all the things, so they seem to take those memories with them. Since we also hardly know about their biological ability to remember things, it could as well be that they read out the information and take them with them. They definitely would do so very fast, as even if in panic evacuation mode they can rebuild their stuff and learn from that experience, as is proven by army ants invading a nest and the few survivors being able to evacuate and access information from before the raid. There weren't any tests done on the bunker ants and even if so, those tests are hard to do and never a clear thing. When you expose an ant colony to a known danger it could as well be coincidence that they react to it similarly as before as the circumstances didn't change, it doesn't necessarily have to be a memory thing. Only in the most complex situations we can be fairly certain that they didn't just re-learn something just now and given that we also hardly know about their learning capacity, it cuts both ways and we have a hard time to figure out what's going on. Sadly we can't ask the ants if they know stuff. Supercolonies definitely transport information around, which is the strongest point against stigmergy based memory. Researchers were able to show that ant colonies that are far away from each other and face entirely different enemies shared hunting tactics against prey the other colony used, even though they never used it on their own. A new queen from colony A joined forces in colony B and only A knew the secret of how to hunt a certain insect, as those don't exist in the proximity of B. When exposed to that insect, B didn't do anything special at first and panicked, so they didn't know what's up. After the new queen joined from A, B was able to use the same strategy to deal with it despite that new queen not even being present. So basically she seems to have told them somehow and they were able to act accordingly. Stuff like that is where a supernatural telepathic hive mind a la starcraft turns out to be the most likely solution, or other forms of straight up magic.
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Aug 21, 2020 10:39
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I'm am ant keeper myself! I've just finished feeding before I found this thread, but I can photograph my crappy sub 100 worker Lasius colonies next time. I studied entomology for a while and even worked in a beneficial insectory. GAG clearly knows a lot more about ants than I do but I can tackle some of the general invertebrate questions.
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Aug 26, 2020 21:01
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Oh hell yes, finally another one!! For a moment I believed I was lonely on SA. Please post your colony and your history with ants, I'm super excited!
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Aug 26, 2020 21:48
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I told my mother about this thread and she has a question! She's been seeing ants in her garden which appear to be carrying other ants. She thought it was just dead ants they were carrying at first but has noticed that they also carry other living ants. Why would they be doing that? We're in Australia.
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Aug 27, 2020 04:46
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Organza Quiz posted:I told my mother about this thread and she has a question! She's been seeing ants in her garden which appear to be carrying other ants. She thought it was just dead ants they were carrying at first but has noticed that they also carry other living ants. Why would they be doing that? We're in Australia. There's a few possible reasons and it's hard to say exactly which is right. If most of the colony has decided to leave a part of the nest they can just pick-up any dissenters and bodily move them rather than wait for them to get with the program. I sometimes see a chain of living and dead ants being carried in my garden when there's a fight between neighbouring colonies. The dead ants are probably being carried back as food, but I've never been certain about the live ants. I assume they're either crippled or else being carried toward the nest in so they can be ganked in safety.
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Aug 27, 2020 07:03
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Ya, exactly! Ants usually don't let injured or sick ants just die, they carry them to safety and try to help out, there even are specific medic ants that do nothing else but this on a battlefield. As a matter of fact, many ants survive injuries due to that and manage to live on, which is why after extended ant warfare you can usually see a surprisingly high number of ants crippled, lacking a leg, an antenna, even parts of the mandibles, or their exoskeleton damaged due to being pierced by venom stingers or affected by formic acid. Dead ants also are always carried around, as most colonies construct specific ant graveyards where they bury them. This causes the corpse to decay extremely quickly, usually it falls apart and is gone in a matter of just a few days and is a big reason why even over evolutionary time frames we hardly ever found any fossilized ants. These graveyards are usually outside of the nest on a certain distance, which is a safety measure to avoid diseases or parasites to spread from corpses. Then also, it might be, especially during ant wars, that sometimes there is in fighting and friendly fire. If an ant from a colony gets too entangled in a fight with another ant, the typical colony smell can get lost or get confusing, which causes other ants to attack their own siblings. To avoid injuries due to this, the attacked ant often crawls up and plays dead, as it of course recognizes the attacking ant as their sister and won't attack her, which causes the attacker to carry the presumably dead ant outside to the graveyard or - if the hostile smell is this strong - inside to be eaten. As soon as the victim ant is inside of the nest, she then quickly crawls around or snuggles with the next sister to get back her original colony smell and clear the confusion up. This is why ant infighting or kills due to friendly fire are very rare. edit: Oh, another important reason might be anti-air defenses! Especially ants that carry around big things, like leafcutter ants or baker ants that collect seeds, are obviously very visible from above, which can turn them into easy prey for birds, wasps and other predators, as the carrying ant is more or less defenseless and busy carrying the thing. In order to defend themselves from those attackers, those species have developed specialized anti-air warfare, where sharpshooter ants climb on top of each other, on top of the objects carrying and even build moving ant towers like cheerleaders, where the ants on top spray venom and acid to flying attackers. This is so effective that usually bigger predators, like hornets or even birds, leave those ants be, as the amount of venom they spray and their accuracy is super annoying for them. Smaller insects, like wasps, can easily get killed by those defenses and then just end up being carried home themselves. Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Aug 27, 2020 |
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Aug 27, 2020 10:18
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Sharpshooter and medic ants are so sick, thanks for sharing this info!
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Aug 27, 2020 20:42
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Ant AAA is my new favorite thing.
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Aug 27, 2020 20:58
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Goons Are Great posted:Oh yes, those honeypot ants are like nature's candy for them. There are some other ants that get eaten regularly, there's even a gin produced where the stuff gets filtered through ants to get some sour flavor in it. I've been ant keeping for a while and love this content! I got some pictures over in the Ant keeping thread if you wanna look: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3880473#post507051775 I love ants, they're so smart. e: hahaha I just realized you already post there! e2: I am now super confused, I thought I was in the cold war thread, what happened? e3: I figured it out now, I clicked on someone quoting you and it brought me out of the thread. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 27, 2020 |
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Aug 27, 2020 21:03
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