Chebucto Regional Softball Club

@murodegrizeco

It had a smoke machine!? This is so charming!

@timtfj

It's not like I've ever followed a carpenter ant for two hours while she gave me a tour of the forest, my mom's house, the basement, the riverbank... and never hinted at where the nest was once.

Who would follow an ant for that long. Especially after you suspected she was snickering at you.

@timtfj

Though I should also note that carpenter ants and some other ants that are often house pests will NOT do this. They will lead you away from their nest on a wild goose chase. You can only use them to find the nest if they don't detect that there is a large vertebrate around. This means not making vibrations and not letting them get a whiff of your CO2 breath.

Carpenter ants will take you anywhere BUT their nest, as if they have a behavior to make tracking ineffective.

@timtfj

It might have been bull ants. They have been in a few good vision studies.

I suspect that even ants with poor vision have a map of the area around their nest. You can startle an ant who is foraging (wandering) and she will turn and make an ant-line* for home.

*it's like a "bee line" but with more wiggles. And really ants and bees are related. Why do we have the phrase "bee line" anyway?

Just a moment...

(journals.biologists.com)

@amyfou

@timtfj

I'm a little obsessed with this large eye'd ant: Santschiella

There is very little information on how she might live. She doesn't have long legs, but still has big eyes like other hunting ants.

What could it mean?

myrmepropagandist (@futurebird@sauropods.win)

Attached: 1 image For on the other side of the Atlantic ocean there is another ant. She also has huge eyes. But, her legs and antennae are shorter and more stout. She isn't closely related to Gigantiops, but really we know very little about this ant. There are no photos of living specimens. There are only three papers. This ant has only been collected a few times in human history. It may well be extinct. Santschiella kohli of Congo and Zaire. One of the only known specimens is the the basement of the AMNH 2/

Sauropods.win (sauropods.win)

@timtfj

It varies by species a great deal. Some of the ants that hunt alone have vision that can rival bees (though probably not as good as bees)

Gigantiops destructor, most Myrmecia, Harpegnathos... but, then you have many army ants who are blind. Their eyes are reduced to simple light detectors if present at all. They hunt in groups by touch.

Myrmecia (common name "bull ants") will track a person walking by their nest, turning as you pass.

I wonder what ants were used in that study?

@dicenbuttons

If you can get a macro photo we can narrow it down... although, the way these ants live tends to be somewhat similar.

Getting to know thatching ants: a general guide for the Pacific Northwest

Hi there! I’m a student currently researching western thatching ants (Formica obscuripes) in western Washington. Working with iNaturalist to locate colonies has been really useful to me and encouraged me to continue cont…

iNaturalist Community Forum (forum.inaturalist.org)

@dicenbuttons

That sounds like Formica obscuripes (common name "thatching ant" although this covers several kinds of Formica wood ants...) and they have the right colors and are in the right location.

@SeanCasten

I wonder if he has some evidence of their attempts to coerce him? (Even if he doesn't it's been transparent, but I'm thinking about the many corruption trials that will be needed. This is one more for the pile and a text message saying "Listen Jay this could all go away if you played ball" would be nice for efficiency.)

@murodegrizeco

These are really well done ants!

@hellomiakoda

Sometimes a scripted video has a few bad lines that set of my AI writing triggers and I just skip the rest.

I felt a little bad, because you can't "really know" but then I realized my biggest AI script trigger is inconsistency, dissonance, shifting topics unnaturally. Eg.

"The spiders of Asia are known for the size but like the spiders of the Americas they can't help but impress. While thousands may be bitten, their reputation for grace is unparalleled."

What are you saying??

RE: https://sauropods.win/@futurebird/115875918364907359

There are 63 videos on the list. I've added everything I watched this weekend (except for mine-craft series, and ant videos that I thought might be a "bit much")

But, I've also made a lot of neat discoveries. I hope that people keep adding to this project. It could serve as an interesting little library of things that youTube might not show you naturally.

@Alice

It's something about the combination of "we need to show the children All of The Important and Wonderful Things" but then also someone said "but they might get hungry"

And really anyone might get hungry. So you need to have a cafeteria, the curators and interns will be in there too. Noses in their books.

@Alice

The food is always "fine" never amazing, never terrible. In the winter they have soups. And it's always off in a basement with interesting murals.

The sounds from the museum off in the distance, but for now have some toast and tomato soup.

@Alice

museum cafeterias are the most comforting places in the known universe. When I've been in a dark place, wondering why the world must be the way that it is... if I can sneak off to a museum cafeteria on a weekday, ideally over a long holiday when it's a little dead ... my soul is put right.

These photos have a little of that mood.

@alexpsmith @iBlame

90s ski jacket bird. Amazing.

@minmi @dicenbuttons

What could be more fun than helping the colony get warm? Your little larvae sisters are so cold and you can bring them the rays of the sun.

@dicenbuttons

And here is a shocking tale of how humans have tried to claim that they made great hearths, but it turns out... these too were maybe* just the work of ants.

(Seriously, it's an interesting debate, and I'm fascinated how the debate is between anthropogenic origin or ANTpogenic origin since ants make that much of a mark.)

*or maybe not. there is a debate

ResearchGate - Temporarily Unavailable

(www.researchgate.net)

@minmi @dicenbuttons

Isn't that done to help melt the snow?