Even though it’s a single species, the nests aren’t all alike, either – some excavate downward while also building upward, others just build upward; some build shield-like domes while others build like a giant half-buried egg, and I once encountered a nest that had been built under a very old dry fallen branch where the top of their dome reached the branch and enveloped it, using it as a base for a new dome extending upwards. They eventually ended up with a rounded cone, smoothing the two structures together into one, and completely stripped the forest floor of fallen spruce and pine needles for a good ten meters around to do so.
One item in common is that while the nests appear to be just piles of needles, they actually weave needles together and use something to paste them as well, importing sand to stick to the walls, removing many needles later on to make passages – it’s only on top that the needles are loose. They’re very tiny ants, and it’s amazing to watch one pick up a fallen pine needle that is easily eight times its own size and more that in mass, and carry it up the sire of an obstacle – though often I’ve seen them stand in lines side by side, passing needles up like a bucket brigade.
Oh – and I once found a nest of that same species that was completely underground: there was a flat rock the size of a big serving platter they used for a roof and just excavated underneath. They still used fallen needles, but with a big stone roof the needles seemed to be primarily serving as an extension out from the rock to keep rain from trickling around the edges.
There’s another species out there, reddish ones, that I’ve watched build bridges using their own bodies to cross small tricklets of water – it’s astounding how the “bridge workers” can lock themselves in place and just hold that position for hours while others cross over them!
Accidentally startled myself after getting out of the shower and drying off. My fan was on blowing and so the curtains was moving and I thought I saw a person in a black hoodie with white arms sitting outside my bathroom window just staring in. The phone made it a bit brighter and clearer than what it actually looks like. But took just a second to realize it’s just a white pvc framed garden chair that was sitting sideways.
Ants have some amount of flexibility in their behaviour. On the other hand, closely related species may look much alike. Here, some species (Formica spp.) build large mounts of needles. They look all quite similar but experts can identify six species here, all with slightly differing ecology.
The picture below is not mine but it is public domain. The biggest anthills may be larger than the one in the picture. The Finnish height record is 2.6m high. The largest nest had an average diameter of 5.8m and an aboveground volume of >26 m3 (part of the nest is in belowground tunnels).
Edit:
Finns have a weird habit of trying to get world records in the craziest ways. One competition has been sitting on such an anthill, naked. I read that the world record was lifted some years ago from 2+ to 5+ hours. It is anything but healthy because the ants do not like it. They bite and spray formic acid to repel the disturber. A large nest may have half a million workers, which means much bites and formic acid. Sitting on a nest for too long may kill.
For a world record, you need to harm yourself and risk dying, which is not wise. The same situation as with the sauna contests, who can suffer the gradually rising temperatures and humidity in the sauna for the longest time. The official sauna competitions were stopped when the winner died after the competition - his skin boiled to the point where it started to peel off. One other competitor died in the same contest; the organizers rushed in to get him out when they saw he seemed to have breathing troubles but the help came too late.
Wow, that is crazy. We have fire ants here, and I have accidentally stood on a mound and had about 50-100 bites at a time, which was traumatic. While I generally like wildlife, I hate fire ants and take joy in killing a mound. I probably get a few dozen bites every year in the garden. One bite is not bad, but you never just get one.
They’re invasive in the United States, so go right ahead and get rid of them. Just maybe don’t take tips from 1930s chemical formularies and dump cyanides or thallium salts on the mounds.
I usually stick with Amdro, which is a hydrazone. I am sure there are more ecologically safe ways, but is is satisfying to see the workers carry the bait down to poison their queen.
Depends – there should be a world record for how many times you ran around a giant ant hill without getting any ants on you, or how many grains of rice you can drop one at a time on a giant ant nest before getting bit, or . . . .
In high school there was contest over who could jump naked over a bonfire the most times without getting singed. It started when a girl complained that the guys were just building the bonfire bigger, which made people keep having to scoot back, and another girl decreed that anyone who wanted to add more wood to make the fire bigger had to jump over it naked. It ended when people started arguing over just what counted as being singed. Which illustrates how silly competitions can be.
A friend’s dad covered a nest with a heavy canvas tarp and ran exhaust from a badly-tuned farm truck into it for twelve hours. It was only two or three hours after he removed the tarp that some feeble activity resumed. They finished it off by grinding up the area thoroughly by rotating a huge tractor in place while one of the big wheels churned through the nest.
Another guy killed off a nest when temperatures dropped down about ten degrees below freezing; he pumped freezing-temperature water into the ground and made the whole volume into a block of ice.
The crazy one was a farmer who just built his annual burn pile over a fire ant nest and had a bonfire that burned for three days – but it didn’t kill them, it just drove them deeper.
There are many kinds of competitions here, some of them just fun sport, like carrying of wife or soccer in a bog where your legs can sink thigh deep. Both attract top athletes that make these competitions demanding sport.
The deadly sauna competition lifted to the surface aspects that can be deadly. Knowing and respecting the limits is a necessity, and pride is a deadly companion.
Sauna competitions have worked previously because Finns learn the dangers and warning signs of too much heat from the childhood. During the old days, people were born in saunas and used them every week after being born. Finns in the competitions know the dangers and are familiar with the signs that tell where the limit is. The problem with the last competition was that some Russians attended to the competition. They did not understand the dangers. Probably assumed that it is just about standing the pain, so they used ‘doping’: pain medication applied on the skin. The Finns made the situation worse through national pride: Russians could not be allowed to win a sauna competition in Finland. Because of the pride, Finns went beyond their normal limits. Finally, they realized that they must step off or die. When the mortal limit approaches, it may be a matter of seconds to get to safety. A Russian stayed when the Finns left and won the competition, with the cost of his life.
When I was in high school the AV department ran an annual water-drinking contest as a fundraiser. They had good intuition in that entrants had to have a B or A grade in Phys Ed. When another school decided it sounded like a fun fundraiser, they ignored the phys ed qualification because they didn’t see the relevance. I think it was the second year they ran it that the winner ended up in the infirmary and then the ER – some guy who just wasn’t physically fit enough to be playing with fire by drinking gobs of water. He didn’t quite end up in a coma, but the scare was enough they ended the contest across the entire league.
One idiot group replaced the water-drinking contest with a potato-chip eating one; the first winner collapsed with seizures not long after receiving his prize.
Some may remember that I’ve been trapping some mice and letting them go from a live trap out in the woods or on the farmland. I’ve been struggling ethically a little bit with this, because I don’t like to kill things, but don’t want them in my garage either. I learned that I should not leave them off too close to the house, because they come right back and I was re trapping them many times, I think!. After dropping them off a mile or more away, the number of re trapped mice dropped a lot. Today, I ran out in the woods near where I dropped a couple of mice off, and found reassuring signs that they are alive and thriving in the snow. I had felt kind of guilty about dropping them off there in the winter, without much to sustain them. I am kind of glad at least some may have survived.
I guess I won’t feel too guilty if there are some foxes, owls, or feral cats too though!
Learned one thing I’m not going to slack off and just go to the gym at 5am anymore. Was way more people there than I thought. Like 15 people. I figured there would be more there than when normally go at 230am but not that many. Turned out that 5am-7 is actually the busiest time because those that consistently go tend to go earlier in the day or at evening. At 230 there usually just like 1-3 people. Almost ways dudes. 5-7 was almost all women and several of them had kids with them. Which is ok. Technically you’re not supposed to have kids in there but I don’t think anyone actually minds if it’s toddlers that just kind of stays close to their mom. It’s mostly just so 16 year olds can’t be in there working out. It’s a 18+ gym. Either way, definitely not going to sit around and read for an hour or two again before going to the gym.
