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#ants

17 posts17 participants1 post today
Public
Entomological Soc. of America

New on Entomology Today: Tiny in size but fierce in defense, harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.) pack a sting that will knock your socks off. Particularly effective against mammals, harvester ants' venom may have evolved to keep rodents from raiding their seed stashes. The pain from a sting to a human can last several hours—an impressive power for such a small insect. #entomology #insects #ants entomologytoday.org/2025/04/17

Entomology Today · The Painful but Fascinating Stings of Harvester AntsTiny in size but fierce in defense, harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.) pack a sting that will knock your socks off. Particularly effective against mammals, harvester ants' venom may have evolved to keep rodents from raiding their seed stashes. The pain from a sting to a human can last several hours—an impressive power for such a small insect.
Public
Snowshadow 🇨🇦

"“The thing is, when you see a healthy forest, like Ngong forest, you don’t think about what is making it healthy. It is the relationships all the way from the bacteria to the ants to the bigger things,” he said.

Muruthi warned of the risk of trafficking species and exporting diseases to the agricultural industry of the destination countries."

#Africa #Kenya #Science #Ants #Insects

apnews.com/article/garden-ants

Belgian nationals Lornoy David, left, and Seppe Lodewijckx, right, who admitted to charges related to the illegal possession and trafficking of live queen ants to sell as exotic pets, appear at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport Law Courts in Nairobi, Kenya Tuesday, April. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
AP News · Belgian teens arrested with 5,000 smuggled ants as Kenya warns of changing trafficking trendsBy Evelyne Musambi
Public
Nonya Bidniss :CIAverified:

"Zombies are among us. And these tiny undead creatures are everywhere. In this excerpt from "Rise of the Zombie Bugs" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), author Mindy Weisberger examines the very grizzly end for worker ants that get zombiefied by the decapitating fly Pseudacteon wasmanni."

It's GRISLY. GRISLY, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! The decline of literacy in the past couple of decades has been appalling. Learn your homophones if you're going to write or edit for the public!

Anyway. Deep breath. New science book alert. #science #parasites #ants livescience.com/animals/insect

Live Science · 'Once the ant turned its back on the colony and walked away, it was on a death march. And the parasite was in the driver's seat'"Once the egg hatches, the ant has only a few weeks of life before it succumbs to the manipulations of its attacker, stumbling away from its home and family and then undergoing decapitation from the inside out."
Public
Luigi :donor:

This reddit comment on #spiders #ants and #bees is quite interesting

reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLi

Copying it here if you don't want to click, links with reference at the end might be broken.

-- /u/lamplorde --

So I'm gonna bore people because I'm a bug nerd but:

There is a lot more going on in the insect world than we give credit to, because we simply dont have the technology to accurately study them at that size. Its funny to think about when we have microscopes that let us see the fundamental building blocks of the universe, but when it comes to insect physiology and how their brains work we know very little.

For instance, studies have lead to the theory that Bees most likely do have emotions. It was a simple study, done using Blue Flowers and the fact that Bees still kept a "heightened state" around the color blue when they started to associate it with food. But it doesnt stop there: there were also studies done on Ant colonies regarding their sleep schedules and we came to find that Carpenter Fire Ant Queens sleep for about the same amount of time as us humans, just in lots of little naps. But the interesting part of that one is not just how much they sleep but how. Scientists observed the Ants antenna twitching very similarly to our eyes during REM sleep, leading to the theory that Ants might dream. One last fun tidbit: Jumping Spiders are opportunistic pack hunters. They spend most of their life solitary, but are known to hunt together in mated pairs, becoming extremely effective together with the smaller Male often distracting the prey while the Female pounces. The odd part comes from the fact that they appear to communicate before hunts via a "language" done through foot stamping to plan. Not only that but Jumping Spiders are one of the few insects that display an understanding of Object Permanence, ranking them at least a little above an infant (not that that is saying much).

At the end of the day, we have so much going on below our feet. Entire little lives that we know so little about. Its an interesting and vibrant world.

EDIT By popular demand, things I should have included to begin with (the all important sources):

Bees and Emotion

Ants and Dreaming (My apologies, it was Fire Ants, not Carpenters

Jumping Spiders and Object Permanence

Which, when trying to find my old sources funnily enough brought me to a new (to me) study that Jumping Spiders might also dream

Public
Corse_Pia

sur le site de l'#ANTS, il y a cette image
.
-Simplifier ? pas vraiment. ce qu'on pouvait faire en une journée à la préfecture se mue en mois
-Innover ? si, en ligne, c'est innover, alors, oui
-Sécuriser: probablement. A notre détriment aussi, vus les obstacles à franchir, dont certains incompréhensibles.
-Accompagner : si on sait comment obtenir un opérateur et attendre, attendre, attendre......

Il manque un verbe:

Angoisser.

deux mains tiennent une carte transparente pour symboliser un service public. 4 verbes dessus: simplifier, innover, sécuriser, accompagner.
Replied in thread
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Muro deGrizeco

@futurebird

"The #ants! They come crawling to me now. Because they've been getting away with bad things for so long, ripping us off! But #Trump stopped it. Coming into our house, nobody knows where they are coming from!

Taking tiny grains of sugar back to the nest. To their queen. I call her "Queenie". She likes those sugar granules. Nobody uses that word now.

But the ripoff stops today! I put a strong #tariff on ants. If Little Queenie wants our sugar, she's going to have to make a deal!"

leafcutter ants carrying pieces of leaf. captions say: "We are bringing pieces of money to pay our tariffs!" and "You are so strong, Trump, sir!"
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