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Mega Ants

Posted by Alex_Dunbar on Tuesday, Jan 19, 2010

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Fun Fact: Ants are profoundly creepy. Beyond the fact that they ‘milk’ their pet aphids and are used as “surgical sutures,”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant#Relationship_with_humans ants are creepy because they are everywhere.

Last summer researchers in Japan and Spain revealed findings that indicate billions of Argentine ants around the world could be directly related. Argentine ants, now common to every continent thanks to humankind’s reckless expansion, live in huge super-colonies. Entomologists typically observe ants from one super-colony to behave aggressively in the presence of ants from another super colony: Detroit ants hate Lansing ants, Boston ants hate Providence ants. This international team of researchers were surprised to discover, however, that when you put a Detroit ant with a Tokyo ant the two will get along swimmingly. Experts believe these insects are distant family, spreading far across the globe to form a giant mega-colony.

If this is true it would mean that in terms of sheer numbers, ants are beating the pants off humans as far as world domination goes. What we need is a little bit of germ warfare to put these guys in their place.

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  • Technology and Philosophy
  • Environment + The Body
  • ants
  • biology
  • mega colonies

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  • Tumblr_kyl4guhxmf1qbn86go1_500_small

    James_Knutila 7 months ago

    f#ck I've got some bad karma coming my way from the hot soapy water days. Hopefully the Detroit ants have my back because the Pennsylvania ants most certainly do not

  • Santa_small

    LumaNatic 7 months ago

    haha! And the food chain evolves...

  • Hanks_l_small

    Orion 7 months ago

    Interesting, but I don't know about this whole worldwide ant conspiracy. I still think they're working on instinct, not any sort of computation.

  • Santa_small

    LumaNatic 7 months ago

    And humans aren't? (working on "instinct" - whatever we consider that to be)

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    itsceegee 7 months ago

    this is old news. thank god ants are so small. they would've destroyed us.

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    cacophobia 7 months ago

    maybe they will. i've heard some recent conspiracies involving milipedes taking over...

  • Alligator-gliding_small

    AlligatorDDT 7 months ago

    I used to dump piles of sugar on ant piles. I bet they loved it.

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    sssss 7 months ago

    I bet Detroit ants are hardcore.

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    EON_ION 7 months ago

    Not to mention they can find food morsels better than a starving Golden Retriever.

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Alex_Dunbar

E.M.F.
Brooklyn, United States
Member since 2009

My theme leadership abilities are unrivaled. Seriously, don't mess with this. "There are worse things than death, and uh, I can do all of them." LaWLzZzzZ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbnY_YH...

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