[ExI] super soldier ants

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sun, Jan 8, 2012 at 11:12 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Kelly Anderson
>
>
>>...When fighting pests with other animals, you need to be sure you aren't
> creating a worse problem than you are solving. I was watching a television
> show (I think it was PBS' 'Evolution') where they accidentally released New
> Zealand flat worms in Scotland, and they are eating all of the earth worms
> there, leaving the fields unable to drain. It's a swampy mess...
>
> Oooh, ja, that's a good point.  Ants will attack and devour earthworms, and
> I do know we cannot do without those squirmy bastards.  We might need to
> experiment with it.  Perhaps it would still work since the worms are down
> there and the slugs are up on the surface.

Before unleashing nematodes on the Northwest US, might I suggest
something slightly less high tech? Geese. The only question is whether
the geese would eat your crop. If not, they might just do the trick!
And, you get geese to eat/sell as part of the bargain. Hopefully
nothing would attack the geese in large numbers, of course geese are
pretty mean and can defend themselves pretty well. Just don't feed
them too much so they aren't too full to help out. You might even be
able to train geese to specifically go after the slugs if you work at
it. Might need an animal trainer for that though. If you can train
rats to sniff out land mines, you should be able to train geese to eat
or kill slugs. I don't know an awful lot about geese, but I have
raised chickens. Don't know if chickens would eat slugs, but whatever
you do with poultry, you would get to sell them as free range... don't
know if a goose raised solely on slugs would taste very good... LOL!!!

I guess Kasey let the feline out of the haversack. I'd better watch my
Ps and Qs from here on out... LOL.

-Kelly