Invasion of Crazy Ants Maddening For Southern U.S.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Nature World News

By James A. Foley May 17, 2013 11:10 AM EDT

A maddening invasion of "crazy ants" has people in Texas and other states in the South wishing for the old days of fire ant invasions.

Crazy ants get their name from their erratic behavior, darting in nonsensical zig-zags and straying far from colonies, getting into walls of homes and short-circuiting electrical equipment as they congregate en mass, sometimes causing thousands of dollars in damage.

Crazy ants are so invasive that in some areas they have become the ecologically dominant species of ant and arthropod, creating supercolonies that drive other, less crazy, ants out.

"When you talk to folks who live in the invaded areas, they tell you they want their fire ants back," said Ed LeBrun, a researcher at University of Texas, Austin. "Fire ants are in many ways very polite. They live in your yard. They form mounds and stay there, and they only interact with you if you step on their mound."


A maddening invasion of "crazy ants" has people in Texas and other states in the South wishing for the old days of fire ant invasions. (Photo : Joe MacGown, Mississippi Entomological Museum)

Read more: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/1974/20130517/invasion-crazy-ants-madding-southern-u-s.htm

---

I admit it: I did it for the picture.

Insufficiently alarming? Then try this:

Unstoppable Crazy Ants Invade Southeast U.S.

by Michael dEstries May 17, 2013
Categories: Causes, Environment.

If the thought of meningitis-carrying, home-eating, giant land snails or mosquitoes the size of quarters isn’t enough to make you reconsider leaving Florida – perhaps a creature known as the “crazy ant” will help strengthen the argument.

As you would expect, crazy ants are an invasive species generally found in northern Argentina and southern Brazil, but unfortunately are now increasingly making their homes throughout the Southeastern United States.

Photo: Creative Commons

Next up: the cicadas. From 17 Years to Hatch an Invasion


A 13-year cicada in Chapel Hill, N.C., in 2011. This year's 17-year cicadas are beginning to appear.

Going too far:

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Excellent post, and thanks for cool link to .ecorazzi.

.One slight correction to the article on fire ants being limited to their mounds...that is not true.
They roam around the mounds for some distance, and in grass cannot be seen. Ouch!

[xtraxritical]

41. When the temperatures are high the fire ants invade homes looking for cool, food and water.

They also leave "trails" for more to follow, they are very invasive.

[dixiegrrrrl]

47. Water company meter reader says fire ants love to nest around the underground meter.

says he found more than a few snakes there also...our water meters are a few inches underground, with a metal lid on top to pull off to see the meter.
Knock on wood, so far the fire ants here have avoided the house.
they LOVE to nest in any disturbed and/or soft soil, tho. Really makes gardening difficult.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. Hormigas locas!

Sometimes I grow weary of cold weather and all that entails, then stories like this one make me glad I don't live in a climate so hospitable to pests like this.

[railsback]

3. As Michelle Bachmann would say

This must be an act of God, a punishment for sins.

[Moostache]

4. I must whole-heartedly agree...

Louis Gohmert IS divine retribution for the sins of mankind....Texas kind anyway.

[edbermac]

5. It's.....THEM!

[heaven05]

10. yep

great movie.

[Granny M]

20. I remember this movie!

Scary.

[frylock]

32. one of my favorites!

bought the DVD.

[silvershadow]

33. LOL!

[DeSwiss]

37. :-D

[alfredo]

6. We've had heavy rain the past few days. That has caused ants to find drier locations for

their colony. Last night I found they had moved their colony into my bedroom. At 1 AM I vacuumed and sprayed the area. They used my Airport and some transformers for a nice warm place for their eggs. They are gone and so are the eggs. They were the really small black ants. Those little suckers bite.



I had to sleep on the floor in my computer room.

[pinboy3niner]

16. Ants in your airport?

[alfredo]

18. Yep, I mean WiFi box.

[Art_from_Ark]

39. LOL

[snooper2]

7. I'm about tired of the fucking ants this year

I'm going to spray the whole outside of the house again tonight...

fuckers are everywhere...

Like magic, go in the bathroom bam they are walking around on the sink with no apparent purpose.

[Lint Head]

8. Eat them!

Insects have played an important part in the history of human nutrition in Africa, Asia and Latin America (Bodenheimer, 1951). They were an equally important resource for the Indians of western North America, who, like other indigenous groups, expended much organization and effort in harvesting them (Sutton, 1988). Hundreds of species have been used as human food. Some of the more important groups include grass- hoppers, caterpillars, beetle grubs and (sometimes) adults, winged termites (some of which are very large in the tropics), bee, wasp and ant brood (larvae and pupae) as well as winged ants, cicadas, and a variety of aquatic insects
http://www.food-insects.com/Insects%20as%20Human%20Food.htm

[CatWoman]

11. I can see Andrew Zimmerman smacking his lips at this

[alfredo]

21. Go all Bear Grylls on them.

[JCMach1]

9. Time for people to get chickens and Guinea Fowl

they would certainly control the population...

[alfredo]

22. Guinea fowl make good sentinels. They make a real racket when disturbed.

[SoapBox]

12. ...and ants in Los Angeles.

Tiny, tiny "sugar ants". Fought them last year but called in an exterminator this year. I just could not take it any more.

[Berlin Expat]

13. Ah, sugar

ants. They get into everything. Including, one morning many years ago, the space between the neck and the cap on my bottle of mouthwash.

I thought to myself, 'The mouthwash is.......crunchy.....this morning.' Then I looked into the cap, and saw a few flailing about. The first and only time in my life so far I performed that spitting move we all see in the movies.

[Richard D]

17. Rather than an exterminator

Try using Terro Liquid Ant Killer.
The ants eat it and take it back to the nest, where they feed it to the queen. You'll have a couple days of a lot more ants, but after 4 days they will be gone for quite some time. Not a poison for the environment. Just sugar and boric acid. You can even make your own, though I don't know the formula.

[Berlin Expat]

27. I've heard that

boric acid kills them. A good way to get rid of them.

I had here in my apartment building a bedbug infestation. The landlord was less than enthusiastic to call an exterminator, so I actually made do for awhile with thyme - bedbugs can't stand it. Put some around the bed, and no more problems.

Finally, the landlord did call in an exterminator after the other tenants started really complaining about it. Pesky little devils, those bedbugs.

Fortunately, now it's spider season, and this year, we seem to have a bumper crop. I've got one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, and one I'm looking at as I type this near the ceiling - looking for a cozy corner near the window, no doubt. Even saw a bat earlier tonight, which I haven't seen in quite a few years around these parts.

[SoapBox]

28. Yup! ...regarding the Terro brand product.

I've used a lot of those (my best luck was with the ones that you snap apart and then cut off the edge).

But it usually took at least 24 hours for the invasion to stop (sometimes I would set out 4 - 6 traps, just in one spot). And in
the mean time, the little buggers were branching off to other parts of the kitchen, bath, living room, bedroom. That is why
I just had to take stronger actions.

I had also tried vinegar, cinnamon, tape (!) but never tried the boric acid.

I'm sure that the stuff the exterminator used took a few years off our life span but there are no more ants
all over the dog food!

[Chakaconcarne]

46. i use amdro....

Ant granules. Get it at lowes. You sprinkle it around the entire base of your house. Whenever they show up, I do this and they disappear within a couple of days. You reapply every 6-8 weeks. Haven't found anything that works better. If you see them in your yard sprinkle some in their area. Some ants live in super colonies that can be as big as a couple of blocks. You want to disrupt them as much as possible. Android just pushes them to different areas, but it will at least protect your house and its not toxic.

[former9thward]

51. The formula is 1/3 sugar, 1/3 flour and 1/3 boric acid.

Just mix those together and put it down. I had a roach problem in a place I moved into but they were soon gone.

[DFW]

14. Ever since T.H. White, we have talked about "not done" ants

But that last one--that is a "not done" congressman, and a bigger threat to Texas than any army of ants.

[formercia]

15. Sugar water with about 5% Borax

The worker Ants will swallow the solution and take it back to the Colony where they will feed it to the Larvae and Queen. It takes a Week or so for the Colony to die out.
Boron can be toxic to plants in large amounts, so put it in a container that the Ants can feed from, but Rain won't was the Borax into the Soil.

[itsrobert]

19. Crazy Aunts?

[mountain grammy]

23. I used Borax to control cockroaches in my apartment days and when I lived in Houston.

I love the post with the Ghomert picture. He does look like insect.

[xtraxritical]

42. I think it's boric acid not borax, are they the same?

[mountain grammy]

49. I found out that Borax contains boric acid.. my aunt always used it in her apartment in Brooklyn.

[Gary 50]

24. God told me....

God told me he sent the crazy ants to torture the tea party hillbilly Christians who claim they are following Christ when they are actually disciples of Satan. The last crazy ant pictured, the ugly one, is actually only an honorary crazy ant but a real crazy uncle.

[cosmicone]

25. Tea Party Ants!!

They infest pretty much the same geographical area as the tea party and are equally "crazy"

[SoapBox]

29. ROFL!

[hollysmom]

26. do the chalk lines keep them out

or are they too crazy to not cross them? I try and not use pesticides, but find the best way to keep termites and ants away from my house is to pour vinegar in the soil around it - vinegar confuses them and they can't find their way back to the nest and eventually die. I just discovered some little ants in my kitchen and will be doing the chalk line around the house today.

[kestrel91316]

30. Biologists need to find out what parasite the crazy ants get that is totally dependent on THEM,

import IT, and let it control its host's numbers.

I think this is what is slowing the fire ants down - they have a parasite problem now to contend with.

[IrishAyes]

35. You can order beneficial nematodes from garden catalogs

They attack the larvae of any critter that lays eggs in the ground, including fleas and termites, so maybe ants too. They kill a lot of garden pests but don't harm anything beneficial to humans or plants. They're pricey but well worthwhile. I manage organic gardening with their help and almost never have problems.

Indoors, if you can stand the smell yourself, the original formula of Irish Spring deodorant soap repels just about everything. I live in a hundred year old home that's virtually bug free w/o pesticides at all.

[kestrel91316]

45. To prevent this new imported species from becoming firmly established WITHOUT harming other species

requires a parasite or pathogen that is totally dependent on JUST the problem species. That's the only safe way to import something as a biological control.

Parasitic nematodes don't control ants. I used them in my garden several times and never saw any difference in my accursed Argentine ant problem.

[secondvariety]

31. We got them in the Tampa Bay area.

Fairly recent here, but I've already had to replace some electrical equipment at work because of them. I'll be working in an electrical cabinet and they just pour out of the conduits and crawl all over my hands and arms. Really annoying.

[progree]

34. I wonder what the "crazy" ants think of us. 400 ppm CO2 etc. Population video:

The dramatic dot video of population growth. A world map beginning in 1 A.D. with 1 dot = 1 million people
http://www.populationconnection.org/site/PageServer?pagename=issues_main

It is about 6 1/2 minutes long but you can skip the first 2 minutes -- the actual dot stuff begins at 2:00 and ends at 5:42. At 5:00 have reached about 1600 A.D. while the population is still quite modest outside of India and China. (So if you are in a time bind, you can start at 5:00 and watch just the last 42 seconds) "As the film neared present day and the dots started flying onto the screen, there were audible gasps, wide staring eyes, and mumblings of "no way" and "I knew we were growing but not THAT much."

[nebenaube]

52. eurocentric bullshit...

I don't dispute the numbers but this distribution is a purely euro-centric viewpoint.

[progree]

53. I don't follow you at all. It is 1 dot per 1 million people -- everywhere in the world

Last edited Sat May 18, 2013, 08:55 PM - Edit history (2)

What is "a purely euro-centric viewpoint" about that?

Oh, I get it. It's all white dots. Should it be white dots for white people, brown dots for brown people, etc.?

Seriously, about the only thing I can think of when I think about your comment is that the impact of so-called developed countries -- mostly but not entirely European and Europe-descended countries (U.S., Canada, Australia in particular)-- have a much bigger per-person negative impact on the planet's resources and environment than other countries .... (and probably in total too)

Or is worrying about population growth just a European concern? I can assure you that governments and NGOs in most rapidly population growing countries worry more about it than someone in Belgium or Austria. They have to worry about where the usable water is going to come from (as rivers get tapped out and water tables are dropping and as the water becomes polluted), and as to where the jobs are going to come from. And then there's the soaring food prices of recent years. I read the Population Reporter every quarter -- www.populationconnection.org -- it is dismal reading.

eurocentric bullshit...

I don't dispute the numbers but this distribution is a purely euro-centric viewpoint

[crim son]

36. I have a serious ant phobia - my only phobia, I think -

and those ant pics make me nauseous. For once I'm glad I live in Maine where I only have to deal with black garden ants and the occasional carpenter ant.

[DeSwiss]

38. You think they're bad?

- Wait until the big guys get here:

K&R

[center]

[/center]

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

40. Great pics -- thanks for posting.

Those pictures make me think about what life on Earth would be like if ants began a rapid evolution of increased size -- imagine if they were the size of the average house cat, maintaining their high numbers as well as relative strength to body mass ratio. Then we'd actually have a REAL war on terror.

[Brickbat]

43. And people ask me why I live in Northern Minnesota.

[JohnnyRingo]

44. That last pic is someone's "crazy uncle".

...and just like the crazy ant, he has also devastated the South.

[awoke_in_2003]

48. Please do not compare the congressman to crazy ants...

the ants may actually serve a purpose.

[freshwest]

50. NRA President Charlton Heston had the answer!

Last edited Sun Apr 20, 2014, 04:08 PM - Edit history (1)

In the end, Leiningen saved his plantation by blowing up a dam and flooding it. But the gun reference was too much to resist.

'Crazy as a June Bug' Louie Gohmert's future or former reincarnation: