Ants

[aggienaut]

   So I had a fun weekend, more on that when I have time to make a suitable update (and get some pictures up).

   I spent this evening reading about ants on wikipedia, because I'm a nerd like that. Ants you see are extremely closely related to bees (relatively speaking. they're in the same Order (Hymenoptera)) so I'd been wondering for awhile if they exhibited a number of traits I know bees have.

   It turns out that new queen ants do go on mating flights (yes flights, the queens and male drones are born with wings) just like bees. Then the drones die (just like bees). Unlike bees though then every mated queen ant finds somewhere to start a nest by herself. Digs a hole and starts laying eggs.

   Read up on army ants. Apparently we have them in the United States but no one notices because the species here are smaller and travel in smaller swarms and mostly at night. In Africa "driver ants" can kill people ... but they only travel 20 meters an hour so one can usually escape. There are species of birds that specialize in eating the insects fleeing in front of moving army ant swarms in South America ... and species of insects that specialize in eating the droppings of these birds!

   One thing I didn't know about army ants is many species, particulary the archetypical one have no permanent nest. They make a nightly nest out of the living bodies of their workers!!

   Also: "Members of the species has been observed using their bodies to block potholes in a path between the nest and prey. The ants will each walk to a hole and measure themselves to see if they are a fit for it and if they are, will lie across the hole to allow other members of the colony to cross at higher speed."


   Jack jumper ants (not a type of army ant) in Tazmania have a sting that can be lethal to humans and annually cause more deaths in Tasmania than spiders, snakes, wasps, and sharks combined! (such sauce!!)


   And speaking of stings...
Schmidt Sting Pain Index (full article)
   This (completely mad?!) scientist named Justin Schmidt apparently made an index of the level of painfulness of 78 species of Hymenoptera. This of course begs the question ... did he purposefully get himself stung by all these insects?!?!
   His reviews read like he's reviewing gourmet food or a fine wine:

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

Comments

Schmidt

[klig.livejournal.com]

Whut.

[stiobhan.livejournal.com]

"The jack jumper ant genome is contained on a single pair of chromosomes (males have just one chromosome as they are haploid), the lowest number known for any animal."
-- St. Wiki

Huh.

[pavel-lishin.livejournal.com]

I guess I'd be killing people, too.

[baxaphobia.livejournal.com]

Now I'm gunna be creeped out all day. Thanks a lot!!!!! hahahahah

[bozotkutya.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[magsmom.livejournal.com]

couldn't sleep. got up early. thought I'd catch up on Lj. Now feel creepy.

You had me at "they make a nightly nest in the living body of their workers."

Now, what's for breakfast?

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

My friend Deborah Gordon has a great book on ants: Ants at Work. Check it out.

[pavel-lishin.livejournal.com]

Welp, never going to Tazmania.

[lotjeisgraaf.livejournal.com]

I would like to know where velvet ants fit on the scale of pain :-D

Also, last year I had my first "encounter" with yellow jackets since moving here. I got stung twice: once on the shoulder and once on the pinky finger. The one on my shoulder was normal, like what I would expect a wasp sting to feel like based on my experience with their European cousins. The one on my hand though .. it really hurt! The pain didn't really lessen over time, and my hand just kept swelling up until it was about twice its normal size. It hurt for two days or so. Two stings by the same species (well, presumably, I didn't actually see them sting me) with such different results, how is this possible?

Velvet Ants

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I had actually red about velvet ants in my wiki frenzy yesterday. Apparently they are not actually ants but wingless wasps! Also:

"They are known for their extremely painful sting, the venom of which was jokingly stated to be powerful enough to kill a cow, hence the nickname "cow killers""

So I'm guessing they are quite painful. It's too bad.

Hmm the velvet ant is surely one of the 78 he sampled but I can't find his full pain index anywhere on the intertron.

Re: Velvet Ants

[lotjeisgraaf.livejournal.com]

Velvet Ants are my favourite waspies. They are so cute and fuzzy and bright red. Also they scream when you point something at them. I've never been stung by one but people I work with keep going on about the Cow Killer thing. I'm not sure any of them has actually ever been stung either :-p

Re: Velvet Ants

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Scream when you point something at them???!

Re: Velvet Ants

[lotjeisgraaf.livejournal.com]

Yes, you should try it! You have to get close enough, obviously.

Re: Velvet Ants

[emosnail.livejournal.com]

We don't have them around here, but that sounds extremely silly!!!

Velvet Ant II

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Okay I dredged the internet relentlessly until I found something. Didn't find the whole list anywhere but someone happened to mention the velvet ant's position on the list. Schmidt puts it at a 3.

[boxsofrain.livejournal.com]

Scary!

[supremegoddess1.livejournal.com]

Oh my lord. I just read that wiki link on the bullet ant. I am so glad I'm not a member of that tribe.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah isn't that crazy?! That's some fucked up shit! Who the hell was the first to think "oh you know what would be the ultimate hazing? I'm gonna make a oven mitt of these horrible horrible ants and make someone wear it!!"

[supremegoddess1.livejournal.com]

and wear it 20 times!

if i were a dude, i'd be like "just cut off my dick and make me a woman" - it would probably hurt less.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah before I got to the "and then they do it twenty more times" I was already like omg that is so fucked up it's barely comprehensible, and then when I read they do it twenty more times it officially exited the realm I could comprehend and my mind just went "whuuuu....?!?!"

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

Read the Schmidt Sting Pain Index again and pretend he's talking about wine instead of bee stings. It kind of works. I mean, "almost fruity"?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

yeah. I just love how silly they all are. And the fact he presumably got intentionally stung by things to do this research. Somewhere else I saw his comment for another 4.0 insect and it was something like "you can't not scream." Sounds damn painful!!