# Those clever ants



## Brian G Turner (Jan 23, 2017)

Ants have been made a few headlines in the science press recently, not least because they may be proving far more intelligent than we thought:

Ants use the position of the sun - and memory - to return to the next:
Ants use Sun and memories to navigate - BBC News

Ants can decide on the best tool for a job, and use it:
Ants craft tiny sponges to dip into honey and carry it home

And, while ants are known to farm fungi in the nest, apparently they've been practicing agricultural outside of it for millions of years:
Fijian ants grow their own plant cities and farm tropical fruits
Harvester ants farm by planting seeds to eat once they germinate


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## Alexa (Jan 23, 2017)

Ants and a sophisticated brain ? That's scary enough.


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## Toby Frost (Jan 23, 2017)

First, they carry leaves. Then they make little sponges. The next thing you know, they'll be growing to man-size, wearing helmets and trying to invade Earth with their space fleet. I've been trying to warn people about the threat of giant-ant tyranny for years.


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## Stephen Palmer (Jan 23, 2017)

I for one welcome Toby Frost's overlords.


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## The Crawling Chaos (Jan 26, 2017)

Strongly recommended.


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 2, 2017)

And now...ants may have different personalities: Ant choosiness reveals they all have different personalities


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## Toby Frost (Feb 2, 2017)

I don't know who's worse, them or us. You don't see ants ****ing each other over for a goddamn percentage.


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## BAYLOR (Feb 3, 2017)

Then there's the 1974 film *Phase IV *in which super intelligent ants try to take over the world.


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## Stable (Feb 3, 2017)

Ants are fantastic. Some of the ants here are as long as my finger, and I'm always amazed to see them. It's got to the point where if I stop on a walk and say "wow" my wife immediately jumps away from me, in case a gigantic bull ant grabs her toes.

I especially like how they proved that ants count their steps to measure distance from the nest: they glued stilts to the ants' legs and put them back down, so with their new longer strides the ants overshot their nest.


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## J Riff (Feb 4, 2017)

_Minuscule,_ the TV series or the full movie... shows the true range of their abilities. Carrying lunchboxes, using matches and fireworks, stuff like that. _Minuscule _stars a Ladybug, though, and they are pretty amazing too.


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## Stable (Feb 4, 2017)

Minuscule is absolutely hilarious. I love how characterful all the little critters are, despite them usually being simply animated and (apart from sound effects) silent.


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## J Riff (Feb 4, 2017)

The whistling ant commander has it all figured out. I wonder if Ladybugs can actually outfly flies and wasps and bees like that... anybody up on relative flight speed/maneuverability of our little winged insect buddies?


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## Stable (Feb 5, 2017)

Whenever I see ladybirds (aka ladybugs) they can't even fly in a straight line, never mind outrun flies in a high speed aerial chase. Although I've never seen one caught in a spider web, so maybe they can burst straight through.


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## J Riff (Feb 6, 2017)

Guess what? - Ladybugs can achieve 35 MPH. Wasps and Bees aren't close - only Dragonflies mought be as speedy.


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## Stable (Feb 6, 2017)

I know we've got a bit off-topic from ants but - wow! That's amazing. Ant-man better watch out, ladybug-man could be just around the corner, zooming in at high speed. Also they secrete poisonous yellow goo from their knees.


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## J Riff (Feb 7, 2017)

LadyBug-Man! LadyBugGirl, woman, Boy..._ LadybugBoy_, Issue #1, February 2017, Insecto Comics. It could work. Ants can guest star as the bad guys (red) or allies (black).


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## Brian G Turner (Feb 19, 2017)

Just an interesting piece about how two completely unrelated species of ant have been found to have a close and mutually-beneficial relationship:
Ant odd couple work together to build and keep a healthy nest


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## ErikB (Feb 22, 2017)

There is an old book I read called "The Ants" by entomologist Alan Compton many years ago in which the author described an attack on a farm/ranch by African driver ants. The property owner had given his staff the weekend off and his family were away. 

He was all alone in the house when he heard a lot of rustling in the grasses near the house. 

When he came out he noticed a lot of insects and small animals moving toward and past his home. He heard a lot of strange sounds near the forest edge to his farm and as he drew closer he saw a massive swarm of driver ants attacking I sects and small animals. 

He recognized them as driver ants and immediately raced to his irrigation system to flood a small irrigation ditch in an effort to stop the ant advance. 

But the ants were able to chew down some tall stalks of dry grass and used it as a way to ford the water barrier. 

He dug a pit around his house and flooded it with water. He also lit the dry grass on the side of the ant advance with fire hoping to turn them back.

The grass fire delayed them but once it burned out and the ground cooled more ants advanced on him. The battle between the man and the ants continued for several days as they figured out way around every barrier and preventative measure. 

In the end he forced them out of his house and the ants left. But the amazing actions and intelligent problem solving of the ants was quite remarkable.


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## Brian G Turner (Mar 4, 2017)

And now, apparently, ants have a genetic predisposition to certain personalities:
Stubborn wasp queens pass their personality on to their colony


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