futurebird - Tumblr blog

[futurebird]

[Image Descriptions: A death feigning beetle munching an apple, a cute drawing of a cartoon bug eating a burger. ]

Made the mistake of giving the beetles a really crisp apple slice (along with the usual veggies theyve decided to ignore in favour of apple) and I’m trying to sleep and all I can hear is tiny crisp crunching sounds. Like how can something so little make so much noise?

It literally sounds like someone is biting an apple outside my door

[futurebird]

Is your ant getting enough sleep?

How can you tell if an ant is sleepy? they can’t blink so you might be boring your ant to death with a long-winded story and not even know it. Or maybe their room isn't comfy enough and they can't sleep well. Ants hate to complain. Solution?

Observe the antennae!

[futurebird]

Only one sister could be queen.

Three years ago she murdered her sister. Her sister thought they would be queens together but Penta had her own ideas. She has only five legs and nearly 2000 daughters who I manage with a modified vacuum cleaner (it’s an automatic asperator.) I’m almost done moving them into their new nest. It’s been so much work. I’ve only killed four ants so far. Please don’t tell Penta. She is not patient with incompetence.

[futurebird]

Breaking Tulip News!

This is Tulip, the median carpenter ant worker. Today she enjoyed some wet cat food. She really liked it a lot! She was the first to try it and now all her sisters are digging in.

I can’t seem to find Pepper, the ant with the green spot, I think she might have cleaned the paint off (she was very dusty) — stay tuned for more important Tulip updates.

[futurebird]

Ant minds, making ant choices, for ant reasons.

[futurebird]

Sometimes the little ant you see on the sidewalk has been to places and knows about things you will never know.

At night she travels down, deeper than your basement, deeper than the grave, deep as the deepest roots of the great trees, where the earth is always warm.

She may know of caverns and pockets of life, scale insects in root-lined galleries, hidden streams, seams of minerals.

For an ant? Secret riches beyond the wildest sugar dreams.

[futurebird]

I was holding out hope it was a provocative if a bit tasteless art project— the kind of art that embodies what it seeks to criticize too well—

reeee! is right this is awakening violent impulses in me I didn’t even know existed.

No. It’s a real project that sought and got VC.

[futurebird]

[Image Description: Eight panel hand drawn cartoon. Title shows a person with a headband in a track jacket arms up as if jogging. "Trying to birdwatch while running"

The first panel shows the shadow of a bird on a branch, then it is shown to be a little robin like bird "Junco"

the next panels show a shadow in the river, could it be a water bird? no, it's just a log.

Next the shadow of a little bird near the road? No, that's just trash.

Next some lumps in a field are those rocks? No, it's 100 Geese!!]

I often look for ants as I'm walking around NYC, and somehow this is even more dangerous than bird watching whilst running. I can't help it, I scan the sidewalk and low walls, the trees and plants for ants. Sometimes I head butt an investment banker in the stomach.

That's the "danger part"

Always trying to spot a bird

[futurebird]

The Ironclad Law of Antkeeping

I was talking to my husband today about antkeeping and in the course of explaining a complex colony rehoming (see the "innocent" twins I posted that colony is nearly 2k strong and CRAZY) I happened to say "anytime you open a port to a space that contains ants, ants come out of it."

He found this VERY funny for some reason and is now calling it "The Ironclad Law of Antkeeping: anytime you open something full of ants, ants come out."

I mean... he has a point. I guess.

[futurebird]

Twins with matching pigtails.

They look so innocent at this age. Big yellow heads, soft exoskeletons. These major worker twins just emerged. They are sleeping. Their black antennae remind me of pigtails. So innocent, give them a week and they’ll be up to all kinds of adventures. (Camponotus nicobarensis)

How do I *know* they are sleeping?

[futurebird]

All your life you have lived in a small dark room. But it's OK. There is a huge Meal(tm) for you you eat in the room. So you enjoy your meal and time passes, and you grow-- then one day, when there is no more Meal(tm) to eat, you feel a sleepiness coming over you-- you drift into the longest and strangest sleep of your life.

When you wake up-- everything feels different, your body is different. You have wings! And-- God! You can't stand the little room anymore! Get out! You must fly!

You emerge from the clay chamber made with love by your long dead mother. The light of a early summer day hits your newly minted compound eyes for the first time! The world is vast and full of danger and things to eat! You think it would be a wonderful idea, to find a delicious Meal(tm) and make a little cosy chamber for that Meal(tm) and then place an egg there so that a little one, one like you could enjoy such an excellent start to life.

But first! BOYS!

Oh to be a hymenopteran!

[futurebird]

"For the people asking for a link to this ring..."

Ain't nobody asked for that you cryptic advertisement virus

[futurebird]

I couldn't stand it anymore. I'm not proud that I've done this.

Is your ant getting enough sleep?

How can you tell if an ant is sleepy? they can’t blink so you might be boring your ant to death with a long-winded story and not even know it. Or maybe their room isn't comfy enough and they can't sleep well. Ants hate to complain. Solution?

Observe the antennae!

[futurebird]

I noticed this plant in our garden. I thought it was a weed but I’m starting to think Pica may be either taking or dealing DRUGS. Some of the younger cats like to use this leaf as a decoration. I’m not too out of it to notice what she’s up to!

[futurebird]

A leaf ball full of angry old ladies who want to beat you up.

Did you know weaver ants have nursing homes? They are unlike any nursing home you have ever seen. Satellite nests are where older workers move as they near the end of their lives. But, old ants are the opposite of old humans. The older an ant gets, the more risks she will take. So, if the weaver ant territory is under attack the older ants in these satellite nests with rush out aggressively and throw themselves into battle. They aren't worried about taking a few risks. When ants are young they are very shy and cautious. In many species their first jobs are inside of the nest. As they grow older they move to jobs with higher and higher levels of risk.

A new young ant represents a huge investment by the colony: the food and labor it took to grow her from a tiny egg. If she were to die on her first day that's a loss. If she dies after living most of her life, building tunnels, raising more ants, collecting food, it's a gain. So, the oldest ants in the colony are the most bold, and do things like exploring new territory and attacking big powerful intruders (like you! don't mess with weaver ants, they will bite and spray you with acid to make the bite burn)

This is the opposite of humans. Humans are most reckless when we have just become adults. I think the big difference is we live so long that our bodies deteriorate. Worker ants seem to die in their prime, just as agile as the young, but they have memorized the local map. Ants do "learn" as they grow older. And this may be another reason for this pattern. By slowly expanding from the nest ... maybe it keeps young ants from getting lost? IDK And maybe it's a kind of filter, the most robust ants making it to the nursing home to fight.

These differences aren't selective of course. Just saying that an ant who gets killed doing simple tasks near the nest entrance might not be cut out for the "elder army." Even with limited genetics there is a lot of variation in ants due to how the brood is fed, nest conditions.

Imagine if you played loud music by a nursing home and all the old ladies came out and beat you down! (I think carpenter ants might do this "old ant's home of violence" too...hmmm)

Based on chapter 1 of "The Guests of Ants: How Myrmecophiles Interact with Their Hosts" by Hölldobler &. Kwapich where they talk about satellite nests for old weaver ants. Plus my own experience with carpenter ants.

[futurebird]

Huge men! Massive men. The most stupendously ginormous men come up to me all the time, every day, every hour, RIGHT NOW they come up to me and they are crying bawling weeping... just sobbing so hard we are all floating in tears and these very large men they say to me "Sir... We love you, Sir."

[futurebird]

i have a mild ant infestation (i left an empty cup of lemonade by a windowsill about a week ago without thinking) that i was hoping to deal with non-lethally by removing all of the food they could find, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. they’re basically just walking back and forth in a line; i’ve checked several times but they’re not actually finding anything to eat. are they going to keep doing this forever or will they eventually get bored?

Can you try to follow them back to where they live? Did they come from outside? Are they in the walls?

If they came from outside they will get bored.