We thought we were winning the war on bugs, but it seems that perhaps it is the ants who have won:
A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.
Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.
The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination.
What’s more, people are unwittingly helping the mega-colony stick together.
Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) were once native to South America. But people have unintentionally introduced the ants to all continents except Antarctica.
How big is this mega-colony?
In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the “Californian large”, extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. A third huge colony exists on the west coast of Japan.
While ants are usually highly territorial, those living within each super-colony are tolerant of one another, even if they live tens or hundreds of kilometres apart. Each super-colony, however, was thought to be quite distinct.
But it now appears that billions of Argentine ants around the world all actually belong to one single global mega-colony.
If you want to learn more about our upcoming overlords, be sure to read the whole thing.
I hate to do it, really I do, because I really just hate internet “memes” in general, but this is the one story where this quote is apropos. Ready? Here goes:
“I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.”
Sorry about that, but it really just had to be done.
Tolerance, you say? That kind of morality doesn’t simply appear in nature without first getting a holy disposition of morality dispensed from On High!
It isn’t possible!
Yeah, I suppose we could argue that the world was created for ants and we humans are simply here for them to live better -like providing bread, picnics were designed On High to His choosen ants!
-ok, I missed the irony, then I followed the link to your blog…
Don’t forget providing protection against those infidels, the termites…!
hmmm….so now we know that God looks like an ant since they were created in his image.
Yup, ants are amazing :)
Shall the meek inherit the earth after all?
Ummmm…amazing…
And yet I remain, curiously, unafraid.
You just wait until ants invent flamethrowers.
Then you’ll be afraid.
Or get to be as large as dogs.
And I thought the 100km long Argentine ant colony in Melbourne was big…wow. They seem to be able to beat all the native ants when fighting for food, and nobody knows what the ecological consequences might be if these ants kill off every other ant species. Not that I lay awake worrying about it or anything, but that kind of thing could be problematic.
I hope Darwin was wrong with his evolution, because if he was true, and the Ants do evolve and start to become intelligent then they might start to convert us to their believe! LOL
Now we have to hold the world’s biggest picnic.
Isn’t the quote about welcoming our insect overlords made in an episode of the Simpsons?
Yes. By Kent Brockman, the news anchor in ‘Deep Space Homer’.
AWESOME!!!!!!