57 replies to this topic

[Ants_Texas]

My Pseudomyrmex gracilis colony plays pranks on eachother. Usually one worker stops to drink some honey or syrup, and another worker pokes it from behind, which is commonly followed by a lot of running in circles. I've watched as a worker dropped a piece of exoskeleton on to another worker when climbing on the wall. I have also witnessed workers completely ramming into other workers when carrying pieces of exoskeleton, which causes the rammed worker to chase after the one carrying the exoskeleton. Luckily none have actaully attacked eachother yet.. 

Edited by Ants_Texas, January 3 2018 - 3:18 PM.

[nurbs]

 

 

This antdude sounds legendary.

he's the definition of a grammar nazi

 

He means well but operates with a robotic efficiency. He started the first ant forum for a North American audience. His insane grammar rules did get actual experts on the forum, so he's not all bad, just went a little mad with power is all.

 

 

The irony was that his own grammar wasn't great. He wasn't even all that much into ants.

 

If you were a girl he found attractive, he would be extra nice and private message you. A lot. But still correct you on your grammar. How do I know? Members of his forum at the time told me. It's why many of us left and Drew created Formiculture. 

[Connectimyrmex]

 

 

 

This antdude sounds legendary.

he's the definition of a grammar nazi

 

He means well but operates with a robotic efficiency. He started the first ant forum for a North American audience. His insane grammar rules did get actual experts on the forum, so he's not all bad, just went a little mad with power is all.

 

 

The irony was that his own grammar wasn't great. He wasn't even all that much into ants.

 

If you were a girl he found attractive, he would be extra nice and private message you. A lot. But still correct you on your grammar. How do I know? Members of his forum at the time told me. It's why many of us left and Drew created Formiculture. 

 

Woah... Now he's more creepy than before in my eyes.

 

I actually grammar-policed him once and he got pretty angry xD

[T.C.]

This antdude sounds legendary.

he's the definition of a grammar nazi

He means well but operates with a robotic efficiency. He started the first ant forum for a North American audience. His insane grammar rules did get actual experts on the forum, so he's not all bad, just went a little mad with power is all.

If you were a girl he found attractive, he would be extra nice and private message you.

Yeah, I heard he harassed drew quite a bit.

[Mettcollsuss]

I had placed all of these ants in a early design of tissue-dirt setup (ask me for instructions, they work well with solenopsis, tetramorium, and pheidole).

Can we have those instructions yet?

[Connectimyrmex]

 

I had placed all of these ants in a early design of tissue-dirt setup (ask me for instructions, they work well with solenopsis, tetramorium, and pheidole).

Can we have those instructions yet?

 

I wrote an entire entry on it, and I'm not going to dig it up

@TC, you made me fall out of my chair because I was slapping my knee so hard in frivolous chortles.

[Mettcollsuss]

 

 

I had placed all of these ants in a early design of tissue-dirt setup (ask me for instructions, they work well with solenopsis, tetramorium, and pheidole).

Can we have those instructions yet?

 

I wrote an entire entry on it, and I'm not going to dig it up

@TC, you made me fall out of my chair because I was slapping my knee so hard in frivolous chortles.

 

Do you at least remember what the thread was called? I tried looking but I can't find it.

[Connectimyrmex]

Fine, I'll dig it up for you. 

 

http://www.formicult...ons/?hl=anthill

 

It molds up super easily, though. Also, I have no good pics, but I'll get one.

[Mettcollsuss]

Thanks. I can see why I couldn't find it. I was searching for "tissue dirt setup".

[Ants_Texas]

I froze half of my fruit fly cultute and put them all in a tube (for easier feeding). I noticed that my Pseudomyrmex and Pogonomyrmex were denying them, and I wondered why so for a week. Today, I opened the tube getting ready to feed a new batch and smelled something horrendous. I tilted my head over and took a big whiff of the tube. Holy lord Jesus, it legit smells like rotten mustard and I think my nose is melting off. I will now put the dead ones in a tube, and keep them in the fridge. RIP Nose 2004 - 2018

Edited by Ants_Texas, February 6 2018 - 6:12 PM.

[Derpy]

When I was a noob I though tetramoruim was Tapinoma Sessile.

Edited by Derpy, February 6 2018 - 9:25 PM.

[nurbs]

noooob!

 

This seems like a playground topic.

 

However if you want to hear a funny story, i will give it to you. Well actually it was more stupid. No one pick on me about this. This was a few years back. Like at least 4 years ago when the Yuku forums was active. ( I used to stalk the place ). I had wanted to start a ant colony. So I followed some instructions on a you tube video on how to make a plaster formicarium. I made it and it was the saddest, poorest of quality formicarium you would ever see. It looked like like a chunk of concrete I had taken from the side of our dumpy road, put some holes in it with a sledge hammer and stuck a piece of glass on the front.  However I continued on... to the next step. Getting the ants.

 

So, not even a half hour later,  I did some two minute research, I thought I knew enough to be able to identify and find a queen and her colony. So i wandered about our field, looking for some ants. I came across a colony of them. ( As of today I don't know what species they are.) It had majors and smaller workers crawling around. However i thought the majors were queens. I thought to myself, "Shoot, look at all them queens!" So I gathered as many as I could in the few water bottles i was carrying until my back was fried from the sun, and my neck was stiff from looking down so much. I started heading back and spotted a different colony. So i collected from that one as well.  I was real excited, thinking I had a hundred queens and tons of workers.

 

So, I get back. Mind you I am super excited. I pop them water bottles open, and ants run everywhere, so quickly I dumped them into the out world, which was still wet and runny because i did not let the plaster dry. However, i continued dumping in these ants from several different colonies. Some got stuck in the wet plaster, especially in the corners where it was still of a tooth paste consistency. However as quick as i could I just kept dumping in my water bottle of ants. into this out world. I had covered the nest part and tube leading from the out world to the nest with a cloth so they would head to the dark spot. I noticed the ants were chewing on each others legs (Because they are from different colonies) but I thought to myself, "They must just be confused and frusterated right now, they will calm down"

 

Once finished dumping them in, I threw the lid on the out world. I could see from the out world the ants were running into the tube that was supposed to lead to the nest part. I stood there just thinking to my self, "Yes, I have a colony now" However once I stopped day dreaming, I looked down on the desk I had the whole mess on, I noticed there was an extreme amount of ants wandering about. "Sure some got out when I dumped them in, but not this many?" Suddenly I noticed, that there was a steady flow of them coming from out underneath the cloth I was covering the nest and tube leading to and from the out world. I quickly pulled up the cloth to find that the tube was not connected the nest. Ants were running from the out world, through the tube and onto my desk. A total mess. So I tried to scoop up all these ants and put them back into the outworld while trying to plug up the tube, and ants were escaping out of the out world as well with the lid off. While doing all this, I knocked it all into the floor. Ants everywhere and my plaster out world not being dry ran into the carpet . So I admitted defeat, and got the vaccum out. I sucked the ants up, threw the nest in the garbage. And didn't touch ants until almost two years later when I knew what i was actually doing.

[T.C.]

Yeah, it was miserable. I had actually managed to get a colony of Camponotus pennsylvanicus colony in a log that winter. That colony I had pulled out early winter, like early December from a log we where about to burn. However I never understood why they didn't do anything and rarely moved. Turns out I probably should have put them in hibernation because they where not moving and acted all sleepy. Haha, I remember a year prior I also thought all the Camponotus majors that fell out of a log we split where all queens. I put them all in water bottles. What a waste of time that was.

[DaveJay]

This antdude sounds legendary.

he's the definition of a grammar nazi

He means well but operates with a robotic efficiency. He started the first ant forum for a North American audience. His insane grammar rules did get actual experts on the forum, so he's not all bad, just went a little mad with power is all.

The irony was that his own grammar wasn't great. He wasn't even all that much into ants.

If you were a girl he found attractive, he would be extra nice and private message you. A lot. But still correct you on your grammar. How do I know? Members of his forum at the time told me. It's why many of us left and Drew created Formiculture.

Woah... Now he's more creepy than before in my eyes.

I actually grammar-policed him once and he got pretty angry xD

Well before my time keeping ants but I have seen threads from that forum. In one a guy had listed "fly's" in his list of foods and antdude kept saying "the fly's what?" and going on about it, saying he'd written it as possessive, like "the fly's legs? Head?" etc. The op didn't understand stand that he needed to change it to flies, or even just flys to shut him up. Of course I couldn't reply that "fly's" could be short for "fly is" "fly has" etc but it's not possessive, that would be "flys'" . Unbelievable he was going on about grammer to the point members were complaining about him derailing the thread, (his rely was "my forum, my rules") while making a fool of himself showing he probably couldn't pass grade 5 English! After reading about his grammar nazi ways it really cracked me up! The only thing that stumps me grammer-wise is so many Americans use "then" when they mean "than", I don't understand how you could mix them up but maybe it's the American accent making them sound the same? With an Australian accent they sound very different and wouldn't be confused with each other at all. Still, I never say anything, why bother? I wouldn't like someone to feel foolish over a simple slip like that. Anyway, time for bed when you start discussing grammer in an old thread! Goodnight!

[FSTP]

Yeah its an american english thing. At least everyone I know doesn't audibly differentiate between "then" and than". But I have a southern California accent (whatever that is) since that's where I grew up.

[DaveJay]

Yeah its an american english thing. At least everyone I know doesn't audibly differentiate between "then" and than". But I have a southern California accent (whatever that is) since that's where I grew up.

I figured that, yet man and men are the same vowels and they don't get confused. To us, men rhymes with then, man rhymes with than. So using then when you mean than is like someone writing "I saw a lone men walking down the street" or "a group of man walked down the street", it just wouldn't happen.
Just one of those things I guess.

Edited by DaveJay, October 27 2018 - 7:17 PM.

[ctantkeeper]

I can tell tons of stories like these, but the best ones in my opinion are generally the ones involving "normal people" trying to decipher what the hell we are doing. I've had people ask me if I was trafficking drugs (test tubes, old discarded pill bottles and an aspirator that looks suspiciously like a bong don't help much in those kinds of situations), burying a dead body or my personal favorite... eating dirt (I was kneeling down to look at a small colony of ants and my dad's roommate screamed at me and told me not to eat the dirt. After I explained to them what I was doing they responded by telling me this whole time they just thought I was "slow". To this day, I still don't know how to respond to that. 

Edited by ctantkeeper, October 27 2018 - 9:02 PM.

[DaveJay]

I can tell tons of stories like these, but the best ones in my opinion are generally the ones involving "normal people" trying to decipher what the hell we are doing. I've had people ask me if I was trafficking drugs (test tubes, old discarded pill bottles and an aspirator that looks suspiciously like a bong don't help much in those kinds of situations), burying a dead body or my personal favorite... eating dirt (I was kneeling down to look at a small colony of ants and my dad's roommate screamed at me and told me not to eat the dirt. After I explained to them what I was doing they responded by telling me this whole time they just thought I was "slow". To this day, I still don't know how to respond to that.

Maybe being "slow" is the perfect cover? Next time people give you funny looks jump up with dirt around your mouth, yell incomprehensibley and throw dog poo at them! They'll never hassle you again!

Edited by DaveJay, October 27 2018 - 11:09 PM.