Ants craft tiny sponges to dip into honey and carry it home

New Scientist ^ | Kata Karáth

[beebuster2000]

how about during molten aluminum into an ant hill and calling the result “art”?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGJ2jMZ-gaI

[luvbach1]

Very interesting observation in your post #2. You should have done a paper on it. I’m not kidding.

[JoeProBono]

Ants land-sailing

[pa_dweller]

I saw an ant display at a museum, in which ants would crawl up the glass wall of their enclosure and sometimes crawl too close to a light, which would burn them to death.

They were probably too absorbed in pokemon go.

[mewzilla]

THEM!

[tet68]

There was a pile of ant corpses under the light, and the living ants never seemed to figure out that they should avoid approaching the light.

Those were the liberal ants.

[mewzilla]

Interesting! Do ants have an ability to sense pain? If not, that might explain it. Humans equipped with brainpower can and do experience heat exhaustion and stroke, but most folks with the ability to sense pain keep from crispy crittering themselves. Wonder if the ants just overheat or literally cook?

[mewzilla]

And what the heck is the museum thinking to allow their exhibit to go all auto da fe on the formicidae?

[NonValueAdded]

“You construct a weapon—look around you, can you form some sort of rudimentary lathe?”

Love, Guy Fleegman

[dainbramaged]

What if ants were the size of house cats?

[bert]

the borax business would be very good

[jmacusa]

Physically impossible. Ants have an exoskeleton. If their size were to increase so would the weight of the exoskeleton to point where it would crush the insect. That said were ants as big as a house cats, brother, we’ve have a problem. A big problem. Ants tend to see just about anything that’s either laying around or moving as either prey , something useful to be taken back to the nest or as garbage to be removed. They’re single-minded about stuff like that. And army ants, forget about it. Those suckers would be a major problem.

[dainbramaged]

One of my favorite old sci-fi films is “Them” starring a young James Arness. The ants in that were gigantic - scared me when I was seven years old, that’s for sure.

[jmacusa]

Yeah, that one scared me as a kid too. That film was first attempted filmed in 3-D but for some reason that was scrubbed. The only remaining 3-D effects are in the opening titles.