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kalkie In reply to din511 [2013-06-04 07:28:23 +0000 UTC]

after watching an episode of Discovery's Seas of Life about Corals.

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kalkie In reply to SporeRedland [2013-06-04 07:26:26 +0000 UTC]

Definitely. XD

Man-where is that!? All I've ever seen of ant shows are the ones that cut leaves and eat animals. Though there was one show about engineers studying nature covering ants about their ability to instinctively create forms that would protect them- like tsdey could turn into a solid ball of ants if they were swooped together, become a cylindrical tube like toothpaste to slbw down their descent (instead of individually falling gillions of miles down) and transforming to a carpet of ants and float on the threat of flooding-

but again- ants battling to death sounds awesome.

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SporeRedland In reply to kalkie [2013-06-04 15:35:54 +0000 UTC]

It brings to mind the old episode of Fairly Oddparents where everything on the "violent nature channel" is auto-blocked by the TV.

It is awesome, in a strange sort of way. You know they're fighting for their existence and dying terrible deaths, but you don't feel bad about it because they're insects without recognizable blood or vocalizations.
I could probably find it again if I searched through videos on YouTube. I think I got to it last time because I saw it on Discovery and wanted to show the clip to a friend to prove how similar ants could be to the Xenomorphs in Alien.
Most of the fighting is pretty direct and simple; ant bites off a leg, ant bites off a head, ant gets bitten in half. It starts getting interesting when you mix species of ants and different evolutionary factors start coming into play, such as size, poison, and suicidal acid bombs. There's a type of ant that grows a larger than normal abdomen filled with bile, stomach acid and a poison that causes those touched to go insane and attack others or themselves. The ant carrying death brew gets into the middle of the opposing force and sets off a chemical reaction in its body, causing it to erupt and shower nearby ants in hallucinogenic acid that eats through their exoskeletons. I'm pretty sure that makes ants the worst perpetrators of chemical weapon use.
The ants use their amazing abilities of teamwork to fight larger ants. There was a fight with about 30 little ants against a big black ant on a leaf. The little ants kept dying and soon the big ant was covered in decapitated heads locked in a death-grip on various parts of its body. Rather than continue to fight and die, some of the ants distracted the big one and the others started cutting the leaf in half. They succeeded and dropped the big one about eight feet. It didn't have enough legs left to break the fall, so it lost its antennas and then the other ants swarmed it while it couldn't "see."

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kalkie In reply to SporeRedland [2013-06-04 17:58:05 +0000 UTC]

How cripes that sounds like an epic war movie plot right there.

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SporeRedland In reply to kalkie [2013-06-04 18:45:45 +0000 UTC]

It might be like the scene where they shoot King Kong off the building.
We could call the movie "Saving Private Ryana." (Reina? Female equivalent of Ryan, since most ants are female)

There are also zombie ants. A fungus gets into their body and takes away part of their brain, putting itself in control of an ant body that no longer feels the need to eat, rest, etc. and leading it to its demise.

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kalkie In reply to SporeRedland [2013-06-05 18:00:15 +0000 UTC]

The zombie bit I've seen shows about- I think the fungus leads the ant to tops of the grass so cows could ingest them and become the next breeding ground for the new fungi generation or something like that. Horribly fascinating.

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SporeRedland In reply to kalkie [2013-06-05 18:36:32 +0000 UTC]

That's them all right. Seems horribly complicated and an overtly convoluted process just to propagate. The fungus could have had a simple life attached to a tree or something, but no, it had to had to visit more locales than Bilbo.

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kalkie In reply to CynicalRaven [2013-06-04 07:21:22 +0000 UTC]

Yea! I was part horrified and part awed at the fact that sometimes the stuff of nightmares aren't just in the minds of people-it's happening out there 24/7.

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CynicalRaven In reply to kalkie [2013-06-04 07:35:43 +0000 UTC]

As humans we live ourselves a very safe and deluded life just so unaware.

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