[OT] Ants, Bugs & GZG

Los wites:

> Jeff Lyon wrote:

> > <snip ant story> What a sight! Why they were fighting I will never

You know, I've seen raids before and perhaps this was the motivation. But what
I failed to mention about this war was that the other ants also had formed up
in a column and travelled down the driveway, (where the bus stop was) and met
the oncoming ants out in the open so to speak. So you've got two long trails
of ants meeting in no man's land. Could both have been on slave raids
simultaneoulsy?

Ever since then (well in my kid years at least) we tried to recreate this
battle using captured ants, but it seems that though ants will fight when you
toss them into a swarm of other ants, its tough to get a whole war going. (I
know we were sadistic kids)

Los

What you probably had in that case was either an organized war, or a good
response to a slave raid. Ants mainly communicate by pheromones & chemicals,
and most likely one side's scouts had alerted the colony to an impending raid,
and the defenders sortied as well. Ants show remarkable

organization and co-ordination.  A friend of mine went on a photo-safari
to
Zimbabwe (It's stunning - as a species, we should be proud to have come
from somewhere as beautiful as Africa) and brought back video & stills of a
soldier ant foray returning to the nest; it's a column of ants about a
meter long and 20 cm wide - nice shrp edges and everything moved in a
very straight path, and apparently attacked everything it came across.
Anything it can't handle would be driven off by the swarm of stinging & biting
ants. And the colony can afford to lose forays pretty often.

Ants are the base for an alien race/predator that I'm working on - the
morale, command/control & commo rules need a little work, but it's
nearing
completion - need some minis, too.  Even without any SF BS (How did the
SST Movie Bugs get to other planets?) they are pretty formidable. Ants are
*tough*.  They will be really scary in DS/SG - no morale checks for
'expendables' (workers/warriors).  They will close assault all day long,

and never break. Yikes.

Ants will fight if just thrown together haphazardly, but will only 'war' if
allowed to develop a colony. Get a bunch of the connectable 'Uncle Miltie's'
ant farms, and get two separate colonies going. Then connect them. It's
fascinating. Bring food & water, because the war could last a while. I had
some epic battles over one single bottleneck connection. To throw in a new
twist, put in two (or more!) connections. One colony oce

organized a simultaneous raid down both tunnel connectors - the enemy
could not hold up, and were slaughtered, their queen dismembered, their pupae
stolen; as S.M. Stirling wrote, "This is defeat. Avoid it."

Noah "Children will pull the wings off of flies, but most grow out of it.
Those who do not? Biologists."

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