[ExI] ants again

[spike]

Do pardon the questionable link between ants and anything having to do with
transhumanism, thanks.  

 

Today I saw something so cool I can't understand it.  I longed to have
Anders present to explain it, the man who so generously gave me a treasured
bug book.

 

I was in the saddest place on earth, and after a couple hours I just needed
a break, so I went out walking about the grounds and noticed a huge ant war
going on, so I decided to watch, pick a team, cheer them on, that sorta
thing.  As I did so, an idea occurred to me.  Ants are related to bees, and
I know that when bees are swarming, they will not sting.  You can scoop them
with your bare hands, they won't sting; I never did get a sting fooling with
swarming bees.  The war these gals were doing reminds one a bit of swarming
bees, so I wondered what would happen if I tried to handle them.

 

I figured it was worth the risk of a few ant bites or stings or both (they
are two different things with ants, for they have both a mechanical bite
with their powerful mandibles and a sting on their abdomen tip analogous to
a bee sting.)  So I held my hand in the midst of the ant war and hoped for
the best.  Not one ant took the least bit of interest in stinging or biting
me.  So I scooped up a wad of them.  Some of them wandered about on my hands
and up my arm, but they were more interested in finding an opposing ant to
fight than to bite me.

 

I know for sure ants will sting and bite if you mess with their nest, so I
went over to one of the holes and put my finger right in the stream going
out.  They went around it.  So I figured I now at least had the scent of the
bad guys on my finger, so I went over to the good guy's nest, and offered
them a bite.  But no takers.  I fooled with those ants for several minutes
longer than is proper for a grown man to mess with a bunch of damn bugs, but
never did I get a single bite or sting.  So I went and got my son, and
demonstrated the experiment again, and again no bites, no stings.

 

Conclusion: warring ants don't bite humans.  Only each other.

 

In these photos you can see pairs of ants going at each other, and singleton
ants looking for an enemy:

 



 

You can scoop them right up, no bites, no stings:

 



 

Happy solstice!

 

spike

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