[ExI] ants again

[John Grigg]

Spike, did you feel like a god as you experimented with the warring ants?
And did you ever think about trying to bring peace to their lives?  Create
a barrier between them?  Or deploy pheromones?  Oh,and how about a flood!
lol


John


On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 5:55 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> 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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>
>
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