Electronics-Loving 'Crazy Ants' Invading Southern US 250
From an article at the Houston Chronicle (not The Onion) comes a report of concern to anyone in a warm climate with, well, electronics. From the article:
"According to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, invasive 'crazy ants' are slowly displacing fire ants in the southeastern United States. These 'Tawny Crazy Ants' have a peculiar predilection toward electronics as well.
'They nest in electronics and create short circuits, as they create a contact bridge between two points when they get electrocuted they release an alarm pheromone,' says UT research assistant Edward LeBrun.
'The other ants are attracted to the chemicals that other ants give off,' he adds. At this point, more ants arrive and create a larger nest."
The L.A. Times also has a report, which says "Thus far, the crazy ants are not falling for the traditional poisons used to eliminate fire ant mounds. And when local mounds are destroyed manually, they are quickly regenerated.
'They don't sting like fire ants do, but aside from that they are much bigger pests,' LeBrun said. 'There are videos on YouTube of people sweeping out dustpans full of these ants from their bathroom. You have to call pest control operators every three or four months just to keep the infestation under control. It's very expensive.'"
Re:Air-Condition Compressors (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda pisses people off that nothing is actually broken but the service bill is tendered, just the same.
There is a bill because there was "service". If the homeowner wants to hassle with tracking down the issue and clean out the dead ants, they can.
Re:Controlling infestations (Score:4, Insightful)
I've got a place in Florida(the land of cockroaches, more cockroaches, ants, and now invasive species), stepping on ants might work with some species but for most barrier protection works best. And same with plain old baiting to kill them, especially fire ants. Up here in Ontario, stepping on paths works on some of the carpenter ants as well, but not all of them. Doesn't work on the pavement ants all the time either, depends on how hungry they are. You're better off using again a good barrier type spray. In anycase, it'll be interesting to see how we deal with these ones. I'm guessing that if they're that sensitive and drawn to electronics, the answer will be discovering something that drives them away, and just slapping one at your house.
Electric bug zapper (Score:5, Insightful)
You had me at.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What do these things eat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell yes I have (well stung technically, centipedes don't bite). Nasty little bastards. But house cenitpedes are to "normal" centipedes what daddy longlegs are to spiders. As a general rule they can't penetrate human skin to deliver their venom, and they're non-aggressive - as long as you're gentle you can even pick them up and play with them without them trying to attack you.
Re:What do these things eat? (Score:4, Insightful)
In fairness a house centipede is a very different breed than most - probably one of the few species that can outrun an ant. Hell, they can catch cockroaches so you know they're fast. Still probably wouldn't fair well if cornered by a swarm, but ants are in fact part of their normal diet.
Re:Depends on the electronics (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe folks should think about keeping anteaters as household pets
This wouldn't work. These ants don't live anywhere cold enough to freeze the gorillas.