Slashdot Log In
Texas Makes Zombie Fire Ants
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed May 13, 2009 09:20 PM
from the what-could-go-wrong dept.
from the what-could-go-wrong dept.
eldavojohn writes "What do you do when a foreign species has been introduced to your land from another continent? Bring over the natural predator from the other continent. Scientists in Texas have introduced four kinds of phorid flies from South America to fight fire ants. These USDA approved flies dive bomb ants and lay an egg inside the ant. The maggot hatches and eats away juicy tender delicious ant brain until the ant is nothing more than a zombie that wanders around for two weeks before the head falls off and the ant dies. A couple of these flies will cause the ants to modify their behavior and this will be a very slow acting solution to curb the $1 billion in damage these ants do to Texas cattle ranches and — oddly enough — electrical equipment like circuit breakers. You may remember zombifying parasites hitting insects like cockroaches."
Related Stories
[+]
Scientists Create Zombie Cockroaches 243 comments
Reservoir Hill writes "Zombie insects might sound like a B-movie plot device (quicktime video) but to the emerald cockroach wasp (Ampulex compressa), they're a tried and tested way to provide food for their hungry larvae. The wasp relies on cockroaches for its grisly life cycle but unlike many venomous predators, which paralyze their victims before eating them, the wasp's sting leaves the cockroach able to walk, but unable to initiate its own movement. Researchers have discovered that the wasps sting the cockroaches once to subdue them, then administer another, more precise sting right into their victim's brain. The venom works to block a neurotransmitter called octopamine with a similar action to dopamine, which is involved in preparations to execute complex behaviors such as walking. Then the wasp grabs the cockroach's antenna and leads it back to the nest 'like a dog on a leash', says one researcher. The team found that they could restore spontaneous walking behavior in stung cockroaches by giving them a compound that reactivates octopamine receptors in the insects' central nervous system. Researchers were also able to create their own zombies by injecting unstung cockroaches with a compound that blocks the receptors producing a similar effect to that of the venom."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Anonymous Coward (Score:4, Funny)
I for one welcome our new Zombie Fire Ant overlords.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome our new Zombie Fire Ant overlords.
Somebody with an ant farm moderated you a Troll.
Parent
You may remember (Score:5, Funny)
Hi, I'm a zombifying parasite. You may remember me from such insects as cockroaches and grasshoppers.
Parent
Re:You may remember (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Just like... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Just like... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Just like... (Score:5, Funny)
Spawn more overlords!
Parent
Bring the over-overlords! (Score:5, Interesting)
When they mentioned bringing the natural predator from another continent, I imagined this [linkbrazil.com.br].
Now, that would be a cool animal to set loose in Texas!
Parent
Eh. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Eh. (Score:5, Funny)
I think they've already gotten to the politicians first. The brain dead are sometimes hard to tell apart from normal people.
Parent
Re:Eh. (Score:5, Informative)
Have you ever read the essay, "Santaland Diaries," by David Sedaris?
No.
Have you ever watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? Michael Douglas, the producer, complained to somebody that the mental patients never seem to get out of character. Somebody informed him that many of the extras on the film were recruited from an actual mental hospital.
I'm not going to mention Kramer [tv.com] here.
Parent
Occam's Razor & Peter Principle (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'm very tempted to apply:
1. Occam's Razor. If someone consistently acts stupid, talks stupid, etc, there are two possible explanations:
A: He's stupid.
B: He's a really really smart guy and a great actor, and pretends so well to be stupid that nobody can tell the difference.
I think you'll agree that the first is the simpler explanation.
2. The Peter Principle: everyone keeps getting promoted until they become incompetent for the job they just got promoted to. (E.g., because it needs different skills than the previous one.)
Politicians are actually one of the original examples in Peter's book. To get elected you need charisma, basically. But after you get elected, you need stuff like management skills, you need to know economics, etc. None of those played any role in convincing the people to elect you. So it's quite easy to end up with a bunch of elected politicians who genuinely don't have any more skills than talking convincingly out the arse and looking good in front of a camera. The skills they'd actually need to do a good job in the office, they simply don't have.
Worse yet, we elect those who can _lie_ convincingly or at least conveniently not mention half the truth. My standard example is the Phillips curve: all else being equal (and invariably out of your control), inflation and unemployment depend on each other. You push one down, the other goes up. Now think of all the politicians whose claim to deserving the office is, basically, "OMG, under the current government there is inflation! We'll reduce that!" or conversely for unemployment. But they never mention that their plan involves the other going _up_. If they told you that, that would be political suicide. So their getting elected depends on claiming to get one up, while strongly implying and getting you to assume (though not actually saying so) that the other will obviously stay put.
Or occasionally one promises to solve both. 'Cause, I suppose, if you're going to lie anyway, might as well go all the way.
Then we wonder how come they lie after they got elected, instead of actually doing what they promised. Duh. Because we tested their ability to lie, not the ability to do what they promised. We just promoted someone to a position for which they're unqualified and incompetent.
3. As a bonus: Hanlon's Razor. Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
I don't doubt that some of the above mentioned don't outright lie, but genuinely Peter's Principle applies. They don't understand economics well enough to know that they're promising an impossibility.
Parent
Re:Occam's Razor & Peter Principle (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you read this
http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf [apa.org]
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd.
It's truly +1 Funny/Insightful. And yet highly disturbing (-1 Troll) too, because clearly everyone must have areas where they lack ability and also lack 'metacognitive ability' to know they lack ability. It's absolutely an awesome read the first time you do so.
Parent
Misleading Headline (Score:5, Funny)
My first thought was "Why does Texas need a zombie to terminate the employment of ants, and how did they get a job in the first place?"
Then I realized, this is Texas, afterall.
Re:Misleading Headline (Score:5, Funny)
I take it you don't have 'experts exchange' in Denmark?
Parent
I tell you what (Score:5, Funny)
This is what those environmentalists should be doing. Using nature against nature in ways that can help man.
---Hank Hill of Arlen, TX
Obilgatory Simpsons (Score:5, Funny)
Skinner: Well, I was wrong. The lizards are a godsend.
Lisa: But isn't that a bit short-sighted? What happens when we're overrun by lizards?
Skinner: No problem. We simply release wave after wave of Chinese needle snakes. They'll wipe out the lizards.
Lisa: But aren't the snakes even worse?
Skinner: Yes, but we're prepared for that. We've lined up a fabulous type of gorilla that thrives on snake meat.
Lisa: But then we're stuck with gorillas!
Skinner: No, that's the beautiful part. When wintertime rolls around, the gorillas simply freeze to death.
This is ridiculous (Score:5, Funny)
Silver bullet impact (Score:5, Funny)
"These are very slow acting," Plowes said. "It's more like a cumulative impact measured across a time frame of years. It's not an immediate silver bullet impact."
Well of course there's no silver bullet impact for zombie fire ants, but if we need to get rid of some werewolf fire ants, the silver bullets might do the trick!
uh oh (Score:5, Funny)
When are the Russians going to get around to linking all these zombies into a botnet? Or would that be a bugnet?
Stock Tip... (Score:4, Interesting)
Whatever company that makes RAID (bug spray, not disk stuff)...
BUY!
The product will be needed soon, and in great quantities.
Porky Pig tried this once. (Score:5, Funny)
Porky Pig tried this once in an old Bug Bunny cartoon.
He had a mouse problem, so he bought a cat.
When Porky Pig went to bed, the cat invited all of his friends over and they got wasted played the piano loudly and sang drinking songs. One of the cats had a lampshade on his head and everything.
When Porky Pig got fed up with this, he bought a dog. How he found a place in the 50's or 60's that sold dogs in the middle of the night is anyone's guess. He let the dog loose in the house and waited.
The cats got the dog drunk and he was singing with them in about 30 seconds.
So obviously these flies are eventually going to get drunk and sing, which is pretty cool, making this plan sweet.
"The flies do not attack native ants..." (Score:5, Insightful)
The phorids will have whole generations to refine their taste.
Australians have a simpler solution (Score:5, Informative)
More info can be found here [abc.net.au]
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Funny)
Way to fuck over the native ants, Texas. Not to mention any other unpredictable side-effects, which, when talking about introduced species, are /ALWAYS BAD/.
Too true.
Exhibit A: American colonials
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:4, Funny)
Yep, you may have heard of the cane toads we have here in Australia. They were introduced to kill off cane beetles - well, there's been more than a few side effects of that particular decision.
Of course, you've just introduced a bug that drills itself into animals' brains and eats them, without killing the animal itself till some time later. How could that possibly go wrong?
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
You said:
Not animals. Insects. The distinction does matter.
Once again I will quote Wikipedia:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Mandibulata
Class: Insecta
and:
Insects are the most diverse group of animals on the planet.
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Funny)
Listen Jimmy, if a zombie fire ant ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about! Zombie fire ants crawl in through your ear and feed on your brains while you're asleep, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL THEM ZOMBIES?
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hence, sometimes people distinguish between animals and fish
Animals and fish? I don't think I've ever heard that split before. People often say things like "well at least we're not animals," or "humans can contemplate their existence, unlike animals," however I feel like that just stems from not having a precise term defining the set of all animals, minus humans.
Of course, even if we did have such a term, would it include homo sapiens sapiens and neanderthals? At what point would we be considered separate from the rest of the animal kingdom?
Getting back to the animals, we have several terms that can mean different things. For example a vegetarian might say "I don't eat meat," but in common parlance of lots of cookbooks (especially cookbooks over a decade or two old) you have meat, poultry, fish, game, and pork.
So-called pescetarians might eat plants + seafood, or just plants + fish. Wikipedia indicates that the word is a portmanteau of the Italian word pesce [wikipedia.org] ("fish") + vegetarian; if a person eats things beyond just fish (e.g. crustaceans), should we use a different word?
"Omnivore" isn't much better, as I certainly don't eat everything. I can't even eat tomato plants and rhubarb leaves -- things that look remotely edible. But people generally understand each other, even if our words aren't as precisely specified as much people would like.
Parent
Animal (Score:5, Funny)
Animal, vegetable, or mineral?
Screw taxonomy. If it moves, it's an animal, eat it. If it don't move, it might be vegetable, eat it. If it wasn't a vegetable, you needed your minerals anyway.
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
People are animals too, as are insects and worms and fish and dogs and frogs.
Being a member of Animalia usually means you're an animal, but the common term animal is not universally applied to Parazoa/Porifera(sponges) even though sponges are technically part of the "Animal kingdom".
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Your quote:
Introducing foreign species, even to battle other foreign species /NEVER WORKS/.
I'm not sure about never but there are often unforeseen consequences. Even Looney Toons had a classic cartoon on this.
In some cases, biological pest control can have unforeseen negative results that could outweigh all benefits. For example, when the mongoose was introduced to Hawaii in order to control the rat population, it preyed on the endemic birds of Hawaii, especially their eggs, more often than it ate the rats.
Cane toads (Bufo marinus) were introduced to Australia in the 1930s in a failed attempt to control the cane beetle, a pest of sugar cane crops. 102 toads were obtained from Hawaii and bred in captivity to increase their numbers until they were released into the sugar cane fields of the tropic north in 1935. It was later discovered that the toads can't jump very high so they did not eat the cane beetles which stayed up on the upper stalks of the cane plants. The toads soon became very numerous and out-competed native species and became very harmful to the Australian environment, including being very toxic to would-be predators such as native snakes.
- Ref: [wikipedia.org]
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you do when a foreign species has been introduced to your land from another continent?
They aren't native and unfortunately in Texas there aren't any natural predators to the fire ant (such as the ant eater).
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
I think he was saying that there must also be ants that are native to Texas and that these flies will damage their populations, in addition to the foreign fire ant populations.
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, are there any native predators for these flies then? Or will it merely set off another even more vicious plague, one which attacks the native species instead of its intended target like most of these ill conceived schemes. If introducing one foreign pest is bad, introducing an entire food chain seems far worse to me.
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Interesting)
An example of an invasive species is the alligator weed. [...] The alligator weed flea beetle and two other biological controls were released in Florida. Because of their success, Florida banned the use of herbicides to control alligator weed three years after the controls were introduced.
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Insightful)
If only Slashdot provided some way to get more details, so you could read more about the plan instead of just assuming they did no kind of study and are totally winging it with no thought or planning whatsoever.
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
I live near the University of Texas college and personally know many people involved in the research of these fly's. Many teams involved have all told me the same story; there is a toxin found exclusively inside the fire ant thorax that the fly's sense and are drawn to. They did not go into more detail that I could retain as I am not a biochemist, I simply felt I could contribute to the Slashdot community with personal knowledge that the article lacked.
Parent
The CSIRO would disagree with you (Score:5, Informative)
After a few horrendous early bad attempts (Cane Toads for example) Australia's CSIRO (the government's research arm) has gotten very very good [csiro.au] at importing biological controls to deal with other invasive species. They now have methodologies in place that let them do so on a regular basis.
Examples include the moth that was used to eradicate Prickly Pear [sciencedirect.com], the introducing of African dung beetles to curb an explosion in flies due to agriculture, and the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus [wikipedia.org] have all been very successful.
And they've introduced no less than 5 different species (3 weevils, 2 flies and a moth) to successfully control Onopordum Thistles [csiro.au] (although the program is ongoing).
I think the rule of thumb here is that you don't solve your invasive species problems by just wandering over to their source country, picking up the first highly visible superpredator that you find, and bringing it back. (Cane Toads, Mongooses, Wolves, etc)
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Why were you modded +5 insightful? You're just wrong. I have to plant a wasp larva on you for trying to get away with this.
Go here and read about 20 years of successful biological control of pest insect species [ifad.org]
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Zombie RoHS Circuit Fungus (Score:5, Informative)
I, for one, fear the eventual introduction of the Taiwanese semiconductor beetle. Not only do its feeding tunnels encourage premature ion migration, it carries the fungus that causes bit rot.
Actually that fungus that causes bit rot is caused by the lack of lead in the solder that causes "whiskering". Lead kept the whiskering down in circuits; it's removal means now that many forms of electronics will simply "wear out" over time. The whiskers are little tiny cylinders of tin, a conductor, and they tend to grow on new circuits over time. http://archive.evaluationengineering.com/archive/articles/0606/0606lead-free.asp [evaluation...eering.com] has a good description and accompanying photomicrographs. Lead has been legislated out of solder by RoHS (Reduction of Hazardous Substances) acts in various countries under a variety of names.
Parent
Re:What stupidity. (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, I learned this fascinating fact after my visit to Texas. I was particularly saddened to discover that my girlfriend had been previously aware of it; but had decided to head off my enthusiasm for dubiously sensible electricity experiments by not telling me at the time.
Parent
Re:I for one (Score:5, Funny)
I for one don't welcome your tired unfunny cliche use.
Parent