[bre1010]

The E.O. Wilson anecdote at the end amused me since he says if there are ants invading your kitchen you should lay out a piece of food and I thought he meant this to trap the ants somehow. But no he meant to just introduce yourself to your new neighbors!

In my experience, the best way to get rid of ants is to find where they are getting in and trace their supply lines back to the colony where you can dig it up and kill the queen. When I was little we had an ant problem in our house and one evening on the back patio I laid out an oreo, a strawberry, some saltines, and a few other snacks to see which ones the ants would like the most. The next morning our patio was a literal carpet of ants. The oreo and strawberry were long gone and they were working on the crackers with less enthusiasm. Following the ants we could see that the colony was underneath our green turtle sandbox off the end of the patio. Pushing it aside revealed the most intricate and bustling ant colony I've ever seen -- with separate chambers for eggs, larva, and pupa and tunnels interconnecting them across a 3 foot radius. Sadly, this colony was a big problem for us so my mom and I dug into the chambers until we found the queen (the one ant 10- or 20x larger than the rest) and then we killed it. Within weeks the colony was collapsing and our years-long ant infestation was resolved.

Since then everything about ants has been fascinating to me, from their physiology as this article gets into, to their behavior and organization. I even made a web game about ants at antocracy.io where you control a queen ant and use pheromones to influence your otherwise-autonomous workers.

[koeng]

Unfortunately this doesn’t work well in much of California due to argentine ants having a much more decentralized structure with a single massive mega colony (there are thousands/millions of queens in a massive connected super colony). Sometimes queens even go along with the foragers!

[anjel]

Advion ant gel is a gift from the insecticidal gods when it comes to controlling argentine ants in Southern California. It's not a nerve agent until converted by ant digestion using an enzyme not found in mammal guts so it's comparatively safe to use around humans, and the ants never develop resistances to it. We're still surrounded by a massive super colony reaching from San Diego to Santa Barbara, but I have no problems keeping my house and yard ant free, side from the occasional and inevitable failed incursions.

[blarg1]

Can't do that with our ants, they don't walk in a long line anymore, instead they appear as individuals moving about randomly without any obvious source.

Some other ones are really tiny with light orange colour so you can't easily spot them, and another type had a really strong carapace so when you squashed them they'd play dead for a while before walking off like nothing happened.

Pretty sure they're evolving.

[ericbarrett]

Crazy ants? http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/urban/ants/crazy_ant.htm

[blarg1]

Nah, they're a small all black ant that looks like this:

https://www.aepma.com.au/PestDetail/2/Black%20House%20Ant

Don't know if they're a different species or what tho.

[Ozzie_osman]

Digging isn't always an option. I've found just using standard ant bait works pretty well. Ants find it and carry it back to the colony where the rest of the colony (including the queen) eat from it and perish.

[Nition]

I love how they move and hide the eggs once you uncover them. They do it so fast! The eggs seem to all disappear over a few minutes.

[briefcomment]

You write well

[lathiat]

Have you seen the "Ants Canada" youtube channel? Combines fascinating ant info with fun and very good story telling.

[marshmallow_12]

I was wondering who would bring it up first! I really enjoy watching it, the videos are stunning and generally high quality content. And the ants are just really interesting to watch. (i like the fire ants the best)