Huge ant colony entombed in cement

[photon]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

I'm sure the local ecology will survive too. I still don't like destroying something amazing in order to study it though. It's a reflection of an anthropocentric view of the universe that I do not like.

Well I'm sure they didn't just march in and do it, they probably carefully considered the impact of what they were doing and wouldn't have done it if the colony was unique, or if it would have harmed the surrounding environment.

And the knowledge gained could be used to help preserve all other colonies. Knowing how deep they go, how big they get, how they work.

I don't see dissecting one colony being indicative of an anthropocentric viewpoint any more than dissecting one frog is.. if they were paving over it for a parking lot or doing it for fun I would agree.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by photon

I don't see dissecting one colony being indicative of an anthropocentric viewpoint any more than dissecting one frog is..

I agree with this, and I find dissecting frogs to be indicative of that viewpoint too. I understand your point of view on things, and I don't mean to insinuate that either you or them are bad people, merely that there's a difference in values here between us. I can respect that position, though I don't agree with it.

[atb]

Taken from another forum:

"And it is worth pointing out that in this show they mentioned that this colony was on a rancher's grazing land and he was going to wipe it out anyway, but he called these guys in so they could study it in the process"

[NSFL]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

I agree with this, and I find dissecting frogs to be indicative of that viewpoint too. I understand your point of view on things, and I don't mean to insinuate that either you or them are bad people, merely that there's a difference in values here between us. I can respect that position, though I don't agree with it.

I actually agree with you. I was saddened to see it get destroyed, but I also agree with other opinions above. I just wish they would have at least mentioned that they had considered the pros and cons of what they were doing. Acknowledgment would have been nice instead of them deciding to just go ahead and entomb all those ants in cement without thought.

[NSFL]

Originally Posted by atb112

Taken from another forum:

"And it is worth pointing out that in this show they mentioned that this colony was on a rancher's grazing land and he was going to wipe it out anyway, but he called these guys in so they could study it in the process"

Oh, I didn't know that.

[REDVAN]

Reminds me of the borg: resistance is futile, we are the ants. You will be assimilated.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by atb112

Taken from another forum:

"And it is worth pointing out that in this show they mentioned that this colony was on a rancher's grazing land and he was going to wipe it out anyway, but he called these guys in so they could study it in the process"

Cheers. In that case I'll take back what I said about them.

[photon]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Cheers. In that case I'll take back what I said about them.

Well your point would still remain but with the rancher and the people who eat his food rather than the scientists.

Of course if the rancher didn't use it then that might mean less cattle, less food, more people going hungry...

From a predator / prey point of view it seems natural, ants and rancher competing for limited resources.

Though I don't really see it that way; we have the ability to control our actions so we can make efforts to preserve the environments of others where animals do not. (Not that we do very much, but the potential is there and the awareness seems to be increasing again).

I guess I'm just trying to understand your view.

[Five-hole]

Originally Posted by Daradon

I once heard a statistic that said that if you measured all the mass of land animals (anything but flora I suppose, when defining 'animal'), one tenth of the weight be be in ants alone. Considering how much one ant weighs, that's insane!

Yeah I've heard something similar -- that the mass of all the ants in the world outweighs that of the mass of all the humans. That jives with your stat as well. It takes something like 500 million ants to make a pound? (That's pure recollection, not a fact, don't cite me. It might be 500,000 ants.)

I've been fascinated with ants since my childhood. I was always into insects -- I had the audubon society guide when I was like 7 -- but playing SimAnt really made me interested in them. The game came with hundreds of pages of factual information just on ants which I thought was really cool.

[Daradon]

^^^ I think both your figures are a little high, but I think we can agree, it takes a lot of friggen ants to equal a pound.

I'm going to see if Wikipedia can help me out here...

'Ants have colonised almost every landmass on Earth. The only places lacking indigenous ants are remote or inhospitable islands. Ants dominate most ecosystems, and form 15–20% of the terrestrial animal biomass'

Well, wikipedia says it's even higher. Says there are 12,000+ known species and an estimated 14,000 species in the world.

Obviously since there are so many species it would be hard to find an 'average' size any with which we could figure out how many in a pound.

Couple other fun facts I remember, ants grow fungus for food and raise aphids like we raise cattle. They however don't eat the aphids, but fatten them up and eat the honeydew secretions.

And of course, can be very hostile to other ants, sometimes even in the same species, showing humans aren't the only ones who wage war. (Or at least battle ferociously)

Much of this could come from intense competition of resources though. Considering how widespread and populous they are.

I heard once that if ants DIDN'T attack each other that they may have done irreparable damage to many ecosystems and even the planet by now. Though, that is obviously impossible to prove and may be unlikely.

Still though, the lowly ant sure shares a lot or characteristics with us, and I think could teach us a lot.

[Five-hole]

So how do we use ants as alternative fuel?

[CaptainCrunch]

If they ever harness the power of the atom, we're fracked.

[JD]

Originally Posted by photon

if they were paving over it for a parking lot or doing it for fun I would agree.

And there it is; imagine how many colonies like this are destroyed in excavations for construction projects? Probably happens daily.

Ants are certainly fascinating. Vicious too.. did you see those ones attacking the plastic hose? Good thing ants don't come in bigger sizes!

[onetwo_threefour]

Originally Posted by Five-hole

So how do we use ants as alternative fuel?

The plot of the next Austin Powers movie...
Dr. Evil harnesses the power of ant biomass using trilions of tiny treadmills... with lasers.

[mykalberta]

The other reason to wipe them out, global warming.

Those ants per pound are probably the worst polluters on the planet.

[Russic]

I was initially displeased to see them wreck something so bad-ass, but if it was going to be destroyed anyway then I'm glad they were able to make something from it. Really incredible stuff.

[Coach]

Thats freaking crazy,.....nice find