Ants.

#photography #nature #insects #ants #Greece #Athens #Marousi
(photo: @kernpanik | license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

New on Entomology Today: Tiny in size but fierce in defense, harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex spp.) pack a sting that will knock your socks off. Particularly effective against mammals, harvester ants' venom may have evolved to keep rodents from raiding their seed stashes. The pain from a sting to a human can last several hours—an impressive power for such a small insect. #entomology #insects #ants https://entomologytoday.org/2025/04/17/painful-fascinating-stings-harvester-ants/

A Lasius americanus worker ant carrying the silken cocoon of one of her many younger sisters in the brood nest. Indiana Dunes National Park. #Insects #ants #Lasius

Övergiven järnväg blir fin motorväg åt myror.
#Photography #Darktable #mft #olympus #MicroFourThirds #Nature #ants #CloseUp

This I think is the woodland red ant (Myrmica ruginodis) because the rear-facing spines are 'big'. It may be rubra though?
#ants #insects

It‘s that time of year again! Watch out for the little guys!

"“The thing is, when you see a healthy forest, like Ngong forest, you don’t think about what is making it healthy. It is the relationships all the way from the bacteria to the ants to the bigger things,” he said.

Muruthi warned of the risk of trafficking species and exporting diseases to the agricultural industry of the destination countries."

#Africa #Kenya #Science #Ants #Insects

https://apnews.com/article/garden-ants-kenya-smugglers-belgians-vietnamese-624f12ae80e0d66a87f03966079efbc1

"Zombies are among us. And these tiny undead creatures are everywhere. In this excerpt from "Rise of the Zombie Bugs" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), author Mindy Weisberger examines the very grizzly end for worker ants that get zombiefied by the decapitating fly Pseudacteon wasmanni."

It's GRISLY. GRISLY, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! The decline of literacy in the past couple of decades has been appalling. Learn your homophones if you're going to write or edit for the public!

Anyway. Deep breath. New science book alert. #science #parasites #ants https://www.livescience.com/animals/insects/the-parasite-was-in-the-drivers-seat-the-zombie-ants-that-die-gruesome-deaths-fit-for-a-horror-movie

This reddit comment on #spiders #ants and #bees is quite interesting

https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/1jwpxxs/comment/mmm3m7i/

Copying it here if you don't want to click, links with reference at the end might be broken.

-- /u/lamplorde --

So I'm gonna bore people because I'm a bug nerd but:

There is a lot more going on in the insect world than we give credit to, because we simply dont have the technology to accurately study them at that size. Its funny to think about when we have microscopes that let us see the fundamental building blocks of the universe, but when it comes to insect physiology and how their brains work we know very little.

For instance, studies have lead to the theory that Bees most likely do have emotions. It was a simple study, done using Blue Flowers and the fact that Bees still kept a "heightened state" around the color blue when they started to associate it with food. But it doesnt stop there: there were also studies done on Ant colonies regarding their sleep schedules and we came to find that Carpenter Fire Ant Queens sleep for about the same amount of time as us humans, just in lots of little naps. But the interesting part of that one is not just how much they sleep but how. Scientists observed the Ants antenna twitching very similarly to our eyes during REM sleep, leading to the theory that Ants might dream. One last fun tidbit: Jumping Spiders are opportunistic pack hunters. They spend most of their life solitary, but are known to hunt together in mated pairs, becoming extremely effective together with the smaller Male often distracting the prey while the Female pounces. The odd part comes from the fact that they appear to communicate before hunts via a "language" done through foot stamping to plan. Not only that but Jumping Spiders are one of the few insects that display an understanding of Object Permanence, ranking them at least a little above an infant (not that that is saying much).

At the end of the day, we have so much going on below our feet. Entire little lives that we know so little about. Its an interesting and vibrant world.

EDIT By popular demand, things I should have included to begin with (the all important sources):

Bees and Emotion

Ants and Dreaming (My apologies, it was Fire Ants, not Carpenters

Jumping Spiders and Object Permanence

Which, when trying to find my old sources funnily enough brought me to a new (to me) study that Jumping Spiders might also dream

Hier zwei gute Ameisen von heute, eine auf dem Balkon, eine im Wald.

sur le site de l'#ANTS, il y a cette image
.
-Simplifier ? pas vraiment. ce qu'on pouvait faire en une journée à la préfecture se mue en mois
-Innover ? si, en ligne, c'est innover, alors, oui
-Sécuriser: probablement. A notre détriment aussi, vus les obstacles à franchir, dont certains incompréhensibles.
-Accompagner : si on sait comment obtenir un opérateur et attendre, attendre, attendre......

Il manque un verbe:

Angoisser.

"Resource exchange is a fundamental mode of cooperation in biological systems [1]. When multiple actors engage in the exchange of resources, they form transportation networks [2]. The emergence of these networks brings profound changes for its members, who are now exposed to the success or failure of other actors. The collective impacts of these interactions rippling through the network create their own emergent properties."

#ants
#hymenoptera

@futurebird

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2024.2342?af=R

Ants: Day 3. If you're just joining me: The ants arrived 2 days ago. I sprayed a citronella insect repellent under the kitchen window where their trail seemed to be. The next day (yesterday), their numbers were diminished, but they were still there. So I tried one of Martha Stewart's ant remedies: pepper. She said use ground pepper, but I saw cayenne pepper recommended somewhere else, so last night I sprinkled cayenne where the ants seemed to be.

Still not completely gone today, though. Some walked through the pepper, and others found a way around it. I saw they were definitely using a specific trail up to the window sill, and when I looked under the sill, I saw a tiny hole in the caulking that they would disappear into.

Not having any caulk handy, I hit on the idea of putting a bit of masking tape over that hole. Boy, did that cause some consternation! The traffic all backed up at the hole, and I could just hear them saying to each other, "This is the hole, right? WTF?! What are we supposed to do now?"

I imagine some intrepid souls will find another hole. Next step is probably Bob Vila's borax/sugar bait. I prefer deterrence to poisoning them, but the deterrence strategies aren't working.

"In the jungles of Borneo, there live soldier #ants called Colobopsis explodens that defend themselves by exploding themselves up. Victims are mostly small female workers. Larger workers grow a giant head. When an enemy threatens the nest, the worker ant sticks its large head into the opening, effectively blocking the entrance. These workers are also sterile females." #trivia #nature #animals

A living door ant, Colobopsis impressa, has a cork-shaped head for plugging up her nest. Florida. #ants #colobopsis #interesting #insects

I like the imagery, but not the text. Title this cartoon!

@futurebird