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.'"
Depends on the electronics (Score:2, Funny)
Try putting a router [slashdot.org] in your house. It might keep ants away too.
Re:Depends on the electronics (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Depends on the electronics (Score:5, Funny)
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But, yes, I'm curious why they prefer bathrooms instead of living rooms, why probably have more electronics.
Maybe they are little sexual voyeur perverts, with ant-cams . . . ? And they share what they see via chemical signals with the rest of their nest in a kinda sorta micro-ant-internet . . . or Interant . . .
Maybe folks should think about keeping anteaters as household pets . . . ?
But if that went terribly wrong, we might end up with a "Planet of the Anteaters!"
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.
Electric bug zapper (Score:5, Insightful)
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What the hell do you think powers electronics, Hot Dogs and Dough nuts?. It's using Electricity even if it's turned off. And who is Scaremongering? I said the FUTURE will tell if it's true, get a clue honcho.
Controlling infestations (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem really relies on the chemical trail ants leave to alert others where to go. If you have an ant problem you need to not only kill the ones present but you need to eliminate the trails they leave. Indoors bleaching the hell out of the surfaces they walk across regularly helps a lot. Out doors you really are screwed unless you want to start digging stuff up.
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Re:Controlling infestations (Score:5, Funny)
A bucket full of ants and you suggest simple 'disposal'. My god man, you have *a bucket full of ants*! The mind reels at the possibilities!
Re:Controlling infestations (Score:4, Interesting)
Or as an alternative - when you find an "ant highway" entering your home crush some of them and smear them around the area where they are entering. It may not work for all species, but for most it seems to effectively communicate that this is not a healthy place to be in their native "language". I've never used pesticides of any sort, and rarely have more than a couple brief (under 48 hour) "invasions" per year. Then again I also allow spiders, house centipedes, and other human-harmless predators to live unmolested in my home as long as long as they keep a low profile (my cat does most of the enforcing on that front), so it probably doesn't have nearly the "land of milk and honey" appeal of many modern homes to begin with.
Probably wouldn't work for crazy ants though, sounds like their death phermones actively attract more ants, though perhaps it's electrocution specifically that has that effect.
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.
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I like your solution!
My strategy so far is vacuum them up and grab a bottle of woodglue. When you find where they are coming from, just squirt some woodglue into the hole. If they start coming out of another hole you repeat until they are gone. For big holes you can use a scrap of paper like a patch and glue it in place (like in cabinets or utility areas). If they are really bad i break out the bio-warfare traps (but that is rare).
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The little buggers were on a BBC documentary last week - Nature's Wierdest Shit, or something like that.
I thought they mentioned on it that they'd found a solution. But I was under attack from the hoglets at the time so I'm damned if I can remember what it was.
Generally though, if something's attracted to X you can use X or something that emulates it as a decoy.
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For most ant species, the death of a small number will bring the hordes to fight off the attack. The death of a large number will make them retreat and avoid that area for a while.
Re:Controlling infestations (Score:5, Informative)
Find the ant mounds and sprinkle some cornmeal around them. They will take the cornmeal into the nest and all the ants, including the queen, will eat it. They can eat it but they cannot digest it so they will all die. If enough people would do this it could eliminate the ant problem. It has worked very well on all of the fire ant mounds that I have doctored in this way.
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Smart.
Just to be a bit funny, please don't take personally. Is that GMO or non GMO corn?
Don't have these new ants around here but we have fire ants galore. And their pretty aggressive. Don't stand in one of their trails they will attack you and try to drive you off.
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* Before the G-police show up. Yes I know it's they're.
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Did you miss the, "And their pretty aggressive" part? That should be "they're" for "they are." So, yeah, their correction was correct. Your correction of their correction is incorrect, correct?
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I've had mixed results with Borax, but thats not boric acid. It works good in clean closets indoors where sometimes the ants will crawl in and try to nest to keep warm. It doesn't work if a real good food source is near though. Like garbage or a pantry.
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What works really great against aunts is some dish washer soap and water. Ants traditionally use the surface tension of water keep afloat instead of sinking. Dish soap is abrasive, cheap, but it's not too bad for the environment. It lowers the surface tension of water causing them to drown. Whenever ants are in my driveway I mix dish soap and water and it does an excellent job killing them. Works fast and after doing it like three or four times max they generally won't return for maybe until next year.
Slashdot is not your personal fetish site. ;)
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Diatomaceous earth also works wonders. Get a bag of "food grade" (yes, it's often mixed into the food you eat) DE and sprinkle around the baseboards where they're coming in. Avoid "pool grade" for your lung health.
It works like moon dust works on astronauts: it's sticky and microscopic and gets into the joints and cuts up the ants, resulting in their eventual death by dehydration.
Sam
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Especially fire ants. I've got an ankle that serves nicely as evidence.
Little bastards...
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What do these things eat? (Score:4, Interesting)
If they like termites, where can I get some?
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Re:What do these things eat? (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like they eat mostly bugs, grains, and small animals.
For natural pest control may I suggest house centipedes? Those fast, long-legged, grey-brown guys with the racing stripes. They are non-aggressive and typically incapable of stinging humans until they get quite large (they can live for almost a decade), they carry no known human diseases or parasites, and are voracious hunters whose favorite prey include termites, silverfish, bedbugs, and young cockroachs. And unlike ants they're completely uninterested in your food.
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Sounds like they eat mostly bugs, grains, and small animals.
For natural pest control may I suggest house centipedes? Those fast, long-legged, grey-brown guys with the racing stripes. They are non-aggressive and typically incapable of stinging humans until they get quite large (they can live for almost a decade), they carry no known human diseases or parasites, and are voracious hunters whose favorite prey include termites, silverfish, bedbugs, and young cockroachs. And unlike ants they're completely uninterested in your food.
How about hell no! [davesgarden.com]
A little bug spray easily manages crazy ants. Bifenthrin or Pyrethrum based insecticides are highly effective. Fire-ant bait is ineffective because they aren't fire ants, thank God.
Re:What do these things eat? (Score:5, Funny)
Aww come on, as bugs go it's almost cute. Like the love child of a spider and caterpillar.
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> A little bug spray easily manages crazy ants. Bifenthrin or Pyrethrum based insecticides are highly effective.
> Fire-ant bait is ineffective because they aren't fire ants, thank God.
I haven't had to deal with "crazy" ants, but I had good luck with pyrenthum on a nasty ant problem once. A friend of mine was living in a dorm and came over my place. He brought a pizza box with a number of leftover slices, that had been in his dorm room. We set that in the kitchen and went to hang out in the other room.
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>may I suggest house centipedes?
Sounds like someone has never been bitten by a centipede.
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.
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Whoa, those look cool. And they can be up to four feet in length? Wow. Can they swim? They look like they'd be beautiful in the water.
They're a very different creature than centipedes though, some sort of a sea-dwelling worm. Centipedes on the other hand are a relative of spiders. You might not even have them in the Netherlands - I know of desert and tropical species, but it might be getting too cold for them that far north.
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Sounds like they eat mostly bugs, grains, and small animals.
For natural pest control may I suggest house centipedes? Those fast, long-legged, grey-brown guys with the racing stripes. They are non-aggressive and typically incapable of stinging humans until they get quite large (they can live for almost a decade), they carry no known human diseases or parasites, and are voracious hunters whose favorite prey include termites, silverfish, bedbugs, and young cockroachs. And unlike ants they're completely uninterested in your food.
Do they win versus tough ants?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LLEpKi3wcA [youtube.com]
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.
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Re:What do these things eat? (Score:4, Interesting)
Congratulations, sounds like your cockroach, termite, or other infestation won't last long (or your neighbor's infestation is being held in check).
I don't actually know all that much about centipedes in general, I've just become enamored of house centipedes, especially after spending a couple years in Denver where bedbugs are making a serious comeback (seriously annoying little critters - immune to cleanliness, bait, and just about any poison short of DDT.) I agree on the second one - in fact it looked like it already had most of it's legs ripped off. As for the first, maybe it just got unlucky? It appeared to be stuck on it's back, probably the cameraman dropped it into an existing swarm. And really most centipedes aren't actually all that fast, just look at the size and shape of the legs - house centipedes are built to RUN, whereas most species are more like heavily armored caterpillar tanks.
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Certainly, I'm not a city slicker by birth, Denver was my first (and probably last) long-term city experience, and I was savaged by "something" in my first week there that decided to chew up a sizable portion of my torso. At first bed bugs seemed like the leading candidate, so I learned quite a bit about them. Enough to discover how ridiculously unstoppable they are (I mean come on! They each feed only a few times a year and lay eggs almost continuously? How is that fair?), and that house centipedes and
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You have mentioned an elephant-repelling rock and a heavily armored caterpillar tank. I'm impressed and amused. While I am easily amused I'm not so easily impressed so, in short, it looks like you're fairly new to Slashdot. Welcome. Your colorful colloquialisms are delightful and make me, at least, chuckle.
Then again, perhaps I'm easily impressed? I don't know. I may also be a wee bit high at the moment.
Re:What do these things eat? (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh heh.
In seriousness though, why would you object to a house centipede infestation? They're harmless and provide a valuable service. If you have enough of them to really be considered an infestation then that's practically a guarantee that you have a serious infestation of something far more objectionable that they're chowing down on. When that infestation is gone the vast majority of centipedes will go looking for greener pastures. It's like a farmer complaining about the cat infestation in his grain silo.
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Do wolf spiders eat silverfish? Because if so, I'm starting a wolf spider farm right now.
ants and electricity (Score:5, Interesting)
I've long noticed that ants seem to have a predilection for electricity. They crawl all over electrical conduits, enter homes at electrical outlets, etc.
Re:ants and electricity (Score:5, Interesting)
I've long noticed that ants seem to have a predilection for electricity. They crawl all over electrical conduits, enter homes at electrical outlets, etc.
It's because they can sense electromagnetic fields, which all electronics give off. Of course, the solution for dealing with these new ants is simple, but counterintuitive -- spray everything with this 'alarm' pheremone. If ants navigate by scent trail, and that's how they rebuild their nests, and it's too challenging to remove the scent trails... then you are left with only one option:
Blind the little bastards by coating everything in it. It's my understanding that, without those trails, they'll be helpless to organize to find food, each other, or even the way home. Everything depends on those trails... so if you overload their sense organs and blind them, they'll perish. After they're dead, the pheremones sprayed will slowly dissipate, but importantly... the trails they've laid down will dissipate faster, so the area is then chemically neutral again.
It is, quite literally, chemical warfare. (-_-)
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Evolution... (Score:5, Funny)
Here's a solution (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ants in Weird/Odd Places:
Bugs in the computer [ncl.ac.uk]: Sun [sun.com]
Microsystems, Inc. knows why Brazil is known to its native inhabitants as the kingdom of the ants.
Ants in yer... [synaptic.bc.ca] Pants? NOT!
(Toshiba [toshiba.com] notebook/laptop); Ants [slashdot.org]
Invade Apple iBook; "Yep, those are ants in that laptop" [faildesk.net].
(Tele)phones: Panasonic Cordless Phone [yuku.com] and Ants In My Nokia Mobile Phone [yahoo.com] (A Yahoo! [yahoo.com] account is required).
Ants in Omniview switchboxes [slashdot.org]: An e-mail story of ants invading a network
switchbox.
Argentine ants invade a network hub [blogspot.com].
Computerworld [computerworld.com] on "Ants had
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Leave it to you to post such a response. Much appreciated.
The funny thing is, I was thinking about your site the other day as I used to go there and check out the new and interesting links pretty much every day. I didn't get around to searching for the URL. Now I can just grab it out of your sig.
Have a good one.
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Thanks! Yeah, I haven't been posting a lot lately due to busy life and not enough time to see and post. :( At least I still stick with quality stuff.
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Well, they are "quality foraged." It says so right in the title. The amusing thing is that I hadn't been to the site in years (probably at least a few years) and it just happened to cross my mind within the past week or less.
Oddly? I don't even think I found your site through /. or anything, I think I found it when searching for strange links. You've had that site up and running for quite some time now. Other than you, of course, I imagine I've been going there longer than most anyone else unless you want t
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Wow and thanks. :)
Air-Condition Compressors (Score:2)
I know a couple people in Austin who've paid for air-conditioning techs to "fix" their AC. It turns out that a relays in the compressor boxes outside their homes are caked with dead ant bodies, creating an insulating layer. Kinda pisses people off that nothing is actually broken but the service bill is tendered, just the same. ...and, of course, it's 100-degrees outside so it does need to be dealt with promptly.
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.
Service (Score:2)
Amazing that the ants are given a funeral service by those techs.
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What's even more heartwarming is the AC techs kind and gentle transplanting of live ants into the warm and cuddly confines of the electrical boxes.
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I'm surprised that they have time, what with all the AC posting on /. and all.
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It turns out that a relays in the compressor boxes outside their homes are caked with dead ant bodies, creating an insulating layer
[...]
Kinda pisses people off that nothing is actually broken
I don't see that. There was a problem - the AC was broken due to lots of ants. It got fixed. You have to pay the AC techs.
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I had to replace the contactor in my air conditioner. The little bastards turned it into an ant crematorium. I noticed the problem when the air conditioner was humming very loudly when it was supposed to be off.
Lucky for me, I found a replacement that is completely enclosed, instead of the partially open design that the original was.
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Kinda pisses people off that nothing is actually broken but the service bill is tendered, just the same
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here. They're pissed off because something's NOT broken? Or they're pissed off because they have to pay for somebody's time? Either way they don't sound like very rational people.
Bad ant strategy? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Seems like having a predilection for something that kills you is not an instinct that should be selected for. If they are electrocuted by the electronics shouldn't this problem take care of itself sooner or later?
I suspect that it depends on whether sensitivity to electrical fields is useful in other contexts, or(if not directly useful) at least tightly-coupled to some other sensory mechanism that is survival-critical and will take quite some time to iterate toward an electrically insensitive replacement.
Mass death upon the power lines is obvious folly; but electrification is, what, a century old(in any ecologically-relevant amount, I know about various independent developers of primitive chemical batteries going ba
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Seems like having a predilection for something that kills you is not an instinct that should be selected for. If they are electrocuted by the electronics shouldn't this problem take care of itself sooner or later?
Yes. Absolutely. You and I are in total agreement. This problem will take care of itself quite quickly.
In fact, within a few short decades all of the electronic devices capable of being entered and short-circuited by endless swarms of ants will have been destroyed, and will become extinct.
Oh, you thought that endless quadrillions of fast-reproducing tiny insects would be forced to evolve just because a tiny percentage of them get zapped? How amusing. That is not the sort of selection pressure that causes ev
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Those colonies that waste resources "attacking" gizmos will be less successful than those that don't. However, such selection may take hundreds of years to manifest itself. Humans are not that patient.
It would seem to have a self correcting solution.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Just put suitable simulated circuits near the ants.
When a short circuit appears, over voltage the hell out of the bus bar (20KV should do) and vaporize the short.
Now that the circuit is restored, resume waiting for another.
You could even be cute and have a delay before applying the over voltage so that the pheromones released have time to sucker a lot more in.
Hey - this counts as patent prior art - this ones mine.
I don't miss fire ants (Score:3)
We just sold a home in Remlap, Alabama. The entire mountain that the house was on was owned by fire ants -- they built underground interconnected cities, so there was no point in spraying a mound. They were aggressive and bit you without provocation. When I got bit, my blood pressure dropped and I felt very ill for a few hours. The fire ants interbreed with local species, so they came in a large variety of appearances. The ones we had were very small and dark crimson, almost black. Their bite was all out of proportion to their size, though. We think they may have interbred with crazy ants because they liked to walk crazy zigzag paths.
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Did you ever play Sim Ant? It was awesome. It was as good as A-Train and Sim City.
I should go find a SIm Ant ROM... It has to be out there somewhere.
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They naturally developed a population cycle. The lawn would be a sea of ants one year, then be relatively sparse the next year due to starvation or whatever diseases they had.
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I did not see such a chemical at the local hardware stores. I did learn the futility of any agent, since they bred faster than any chemical could kill them. They seemed to have a deep underground reservoir of breeders.
Re:I don't miss fire ants (Score:4, Informative)
Fire ants do interbreed.
http://www.caes.uga.edu/commodities/fieldcrops/forages/events/FC13/03/ANR-1248%20Fire%20ants%20and%20cattle.pdf [uga.edu]
http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2012/07/fire_ants_joes_outdoor_office.html [al.com]
http://books.google.com/books?id=vxt5BqOKEAIC&pg=PA510&lpg=PA510&dq=fire+ants+interbreed&source=bl&ots=8eWZaSkLp_&sig=uJHTanPl1LV7mhieoReC1eX0plc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=dwiYUdimJ-rI0gHttIGwBQ&ved=0CEwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=fire%20ants%20interbreed&f=false [google.com]
Also, they do bite before stinging.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_ants [wikipedia.org]
Different plant "species", such as of pine, do interbreed as well. The distinction of species vs. sub-species is often blurred in the wild.
Good idea! (Score:5, Funny)
"...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.
What kind of survival mechanism is that? "Oh! There's danger over there. Let's all go check it out..."
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Yeah, they are the Red Shirt ants.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Funny)
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Well, they are in Texas.
Re:Good idea! (Score:5, Informative)
"...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.
What kind of survival mechanism is that? "Oh! There's danger over there. Let's all go check it out..."
Given that(among the ants that don't have even cooler mechanisms, like specialized suicide soldiers who blow themselves up to shower the enemy with toxins) "swarm the enemy and keep biting and stinging without regards for casualties until nothing that isn't us is still moving" is considered a valid strategy, the chemical signalling actually makes sense: If an ant from another colony, or a predatory insect/arachnid, attacks a single ant, the ant's body automatically releases the alarm pheremone and the attacker gets zerg rushed.
It's just that, against implacable electronics that are totally indifferent to anything except being insulated by the uncounted bodies of the slain, this tactic doesn't work very well(see also: mammals that 'freeze' to avoid predators; but discover that cars aren't visual hunters; but they do kill anything that gets in their way)...
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Ah, but it does work well. When it stops working or is insulated in dead ants, the ants have done their job.
Re:Good idea! (Score:4, Informative)
It's more like "Someone's in our base killing our doodz. Let's go give him a good shoeing!".
Also, soldier and worker ants don't reproduce. The way they propagate their genes is by proxy, through the queen, so that explains their willingness to sacrifice themselves to protect her - hence the banzai charge. The genetics of ants (and wasps & bees) is odd. If you're one of the sterile castes the queen is more related to you than you are. Or something like that.
Good News / Bad News (Score:2)
So the good news is Fire Ants won't sting you to death because Crazy Ants are replacing them. The bad news is that Crazy Ants sting your gizmos to death.
What about putting some mild chemical in electronic coatings that ants don't like? They would then be less likely to hang out on gizmos.
Unlike pesticides on fruits, there is no "incentive" to become immune to such chemicals because there is no benefit to hanging out on electronics to begin with.
My (Score:2)
My router is a CISCO, should i worry too? any advice from you the computers people?
You had me at.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Glad I live where it snows (Score:3)
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Ayuh, that we do. They aren't nearly as bad as the fire ants that they have down south though - at least not in my opinion. By the way, I think you're the first fellow Mainer that I've seen on /. but I can't be sure as it's not like they have profiles that identify us as such. Ah well, you're AC and probably won't see this.
I wonder if I should inform them http://umaine.edu/publications/2550e/ [umaine.edu] that they're in Franklin County too. Too bad I'm lazy.
Instant grits? (Score:2)
We used to sprinkle instant grits around red and and fire and nests. They'd eat the grits, their stomachs would rupture, and they would die.
Does anyone know whether this might also work on killing nests of crazy ants?
Pfff, crazy ants, fire ants... (Score:2)
said the aardvark (Score:2)
if only there were some organism in nature that was a natural foe of invading ant armies.
OH MY GOD! (Score:2)
Does American wildlife.... (Score:2)
...ever invade other parts of the world and cause problems? I seems that this must happen, but I never read about it.
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Yep, The Hacker and the Ants. [wikipedia.org] My first thought was the ants are going clubbing 80s style, which rings a faint bell too. Maybe a beer commercial...?
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It's from Phase IV
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Aha. Maybe you should start to design your electronics differently, so ants can either not get close to the higher voltage circuits or use better insulation.
BTW: When there would be a biblical apocalypse, it would affect the whole planet. Or. If it is only in the US. Well, I will watch it on TV.
And another thing: Those ants already existed prior to those incidents (which might be triggered by globalized transportation and or the climate change). They lived in other countries for millions of years (or at lea
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Yeah, half the time the Bible is talking about Man (as in mankind, sorry ladies). Some people want to make the earth gentler for humans, some people miss the trees that used to be a part of their neighborhoods growing up. There's also a set of (seemingly) contradictory 'orders': subdue nature (terraform the earth) and at the same time, do not destroy the earth. I imagine that makes four groups: some people leaning towards the former, some leaning towards the latter, some preferring a course of moderation, a
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Fat chance, these ants seem pretty harmless. More like annoy all over the earth.
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I know most of /. will scoff at this assertion, but we may be witnessing a Biblical prophecy come true: "And there shall be destruction and darkness come upon creation, and the beasts shall reign over the earth."
By mass, beasts have always reigned over the earth... A mixture of applied landscaping, chemical warfare, and rifles have allowed humans to carve out an enclave free of large mammals we don't approve of, and some of the nastier bugs and microbes(wealthy areas of the Northern Hemisphere, at least. Your mileage may vary. Offer void where restricted by law or subverted by rapid evolution of antibiotic resistant microbes. Terms and conditions may apply); but we've never been close to having the upper hand again
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