Ant problem

[mattbell]

Suppose your house (say, the one I'm living in now) has an ant problem.  Suppose you toss some food out and the ants get to it.  The ants take your food back and turn it in to more ants.  How many more ants?

Energy conversion across trophic levels in the food chain is around 10%, an ant in this part of the world weighs around 0.2mg, and a typical apple weighs around 300g. 

So... if the ants eat the whole apple, they can use it to make 150,000 more ants.  Fucking ants.  

Comments

[danea.livejournal.com]

This is what the super secret Chinese Ant Chalk is for. ;)

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

A few years ago, I had a girlfriend who left a bunch of food out at her old house and then was away for a week. There was a river of ants several inches wide coming in through the kitchen. We got our hands on a cinnamon jar of mythic proportions (perhaps a gallon) and used it to put a perimeter around a livable area while we deployed a dozen ant traps surrounding the area. It was epic, and I'm still kicking myself for not having taken pictures.

[ekesobriquet.livejournal.com]

Also, someone is about to win at SimAnt and we must find them:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8127000/8127519.stm

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

All for one, and one for all!

I remember playing SimAnt and driving the humans out of the house. I'm eager to move to my next temporary living situation asap in part due to the ant problem, so they are in fact winning.

[ekesobriquet.livejournal.com]

I was impressed earlier this year when I left my car parked in one place by bushes for like a week or so and they managed to make a trail to the floor mat in the car where I'd spilled maple syrup a few months earlier. Luckily I didn't need the passenger seat for a while and I just reparked each day afterward and they were gone after a few days.

[zunger.livejournal.com]

Wow. This has managed to make my dislike of ants even more intense.

It's odd; there are few species I have come to be so annoyed by.