Reddit Reddit reviews The Ants

We found 20 Reddit comments about The Ants. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Ants
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20 Reddit comments about The Ants:

u/hobskhan · 86 pointsr/askscience

You inspired me to bust out my copy of the ant bible, The Ants, as I realize I know less about the nuptial flight than any other aspect of ant life.

E.O. Wilson & Bert Holldobler write:

> It follows that the brief intervals between leaving the home nest and settling into a newly constructed nest is a period of intense natural selection among queens, a dangerous odyssey that must be precisely timed and executed to succeed. We should expect to find an array of physiological and behavioral mechanisms that enable the young queens simultaneously to avoid enemies, to get to the right habitat on time in order to build a secure nest, and to mate with a male of the same species.


Then, I was dismayed to discover that they dedicated 20 oversized pages to mostly male and female sexual selection and how colonies time and coordinate their mating flights (ants mate in midair). I'm going to have to leave this one to Google, and more recent research. I'm sure someone has performed experiments about nest site selection.

Last thing I'll add more anecdotally from my readings, is that myrmecologists usually emphasize great urgency during this period of a queen's life (even in the above passage). Therefore, if I were conducting an experiment, I would hypothesize that queens will stop at the first viable site and not "shop around," as the risk to their lives is so high.

u/mdgraller · 69 pointsr/videos

$130 on Amazon

https://www.amazon.com/Ants-Bert-Holldobler/dp/0674040759

It's really an amazing book though. Hardcover, full size, images, drawings, everything you'd ever want to know about ants. Great coffee table book for weirdos (like me) who love ants

u/km89 · 65 pointsr/news

Psh. That book runs you $129 new, $80 used.

>http://www.amazon.com/The-Ants-Bert-Holldobler/dp/0674040759

u/mavaction · 19 pointsr/gifs

Aren't we all? But no..just an evolution fanatic which led to ant obsession. Literally read "the book" ... "The Ants". It's 7 pounds! I carefully read about 85% of it...it is huge with oversized pages like 13' x 10'. then you have the small print...you are sometimes not turning a page for like a half hour.

u/[deleted] · 11 pointsr/science

If you live in the southern portion of the US you should be able to find fungus growers

Trachymyrmex septentrionalis
http://mississippientomologicalmuseum.org.msstate.edu//Researchtaxapages/Formicidaepages/genericpages/Trachy.septent.htm

My parents have like a dozen colonies in their front yard in North Alabama, I have seen them in most of the SE USA out to Arizona.

South Texas has some of the Atta leafcutters like what are in south america.

Slave raiding ants of various genera live through out the US (actually slave raiding as an ant behavior is common in temperate areas) http://www.myrmecos.net/formicinae/slaveants.html
I have heard of people observing raids up into the north USA. I personally have seen 2 raids in my life, they are a little hard to find in some areas.

A good book about ants writen for general readers (with no biology /entomology background) is "Journey to the Ants" byB Holdobler and EO Wilson (the famous evolutionary biologist). I had the pleasure to meet Holdobler and I have corresponded with EO Wilson, both very cool people.

http://www.amazon.com/Journey-Ants-Story-Scientific-Exploration/dp/0674485262

If you have a biology background or want more you can get the book "The Ants" ... same authors. Pretty much the Bible of myrmecology.

http://www.amazon.com/Ants-Bert-H%C3%B6lldobler/dp/0674040759/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b

u/Formic-and-Pikachu · 7 pointsr/ants

There is an excillend documentary that features one of both of the "prophets of The Ants" (I call them that 'cause they wrote our "bible" The Ants).

Ants: Nature's Secret Power features Bert Hölldobler. (< my fav to show students/friends/family)

Lord of the Ants features E. O. Wilson.

u/NoriceXTchzBurrito · 6 pointsr/Entomology

Check out The Ants by E.O. Wilson. Probably my favorite insect book.

u/SamnitesFall · 5 pointsr/IWantToLearn

If you're serious about wanting to learn a LOAD of awesome stuff about ants, go straight to the authoritative source: E.O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler's The Ants.

u/feijai · 3 pointsr/science

Ants are caught in gridlock all the time. What the hell is this writer smoking? Does no one read The Ants before they make claims in the NYT?

u/DarkeKnight · 3 pointsr/whowouldwin

In The Ants, researchers Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson estimate that there are upwards of 10,000,000,000,000,000 individual ants alive on Earth at any given time.

For comparison, there are roughly 7,000,000,000 people on earth.

10,000,000,000,000,000

7,000,000,000

That's a difference of 7 0s.

That's approximately 1,428,571 ants PER HUMAN.

And if that isn't enough, read this.

tl;dr Ants stomp bad.

u/Priapulid · 3 pointsr/dwarffortress

These are castings of species you can find in the US. Somewhere there are probably better quality photos but these are the best I could find. I saw these in a presentation given by Dr Tschinkel and he had a bunch of really awesome high quality shots that might not have made it to the web.

I actually met him and Dr. Holldobler (mentioned in the linked video) one summer in Arizona.

For anyone interested the book Journey to the Ants by EO Wilson and Holldobler is the laymen version of their seminal book The Ants... which is pretty much the bible for anyone that studies ants.

Interesting factiod: You can find some interesting species just about any place in the world... in the US there are about 400+ species including army ants, fungus growers, slave making ants, etc.

u/MadGradStudent · 2 pointsr/todayilearned

The Ants by EO Wilson and Bert Holldobler is an excellent read for this. They have a few other books on ants and other eusocial insects as well.

Edit: formatting

u/formicarium · 2 pointsr/ants

This is my kind of question. I will play the hell out of this game when you finish it!

If you can find this book in a library (or pay iron price) then it's by far the most complete and fascinating book on ants, with incredible detail on a lot of genera. Unfortunately it's getting on a little bit in age, so some parts are inaccurate or gaps have been filled. Wilson has written a bunch of books on social insects, most of which are pretty good.

There are so many species you are not likely to get a complete account from any books though, so if you have some journal access try reading papers on species that interest you. For best results you could stick to really well studied species like S. invicta.

For just general cool facts and probably the best macro photos online I read Alex Wild's blog myrmecos.

Um if you think of questions about a specific species we could also try to answer. In general for all of your numbered questions there are multiple species that fit that could be really interesting to play with.

edit: Actually, because not that many non-Aussies are familiar with this badass genus, maybe check out Myrmecia. They hunt by leaping onto the backs of prey like tiny stinging panthers. Also they are vicious bastards that will chase you for some meters when disturbed.

u/cahamarca · 1 pointr/changemyview

> I believe people do act selflessly everyday but I don’t think I makes rational sense to live this way. Why would I ever serve anyone’s ends other than my own

To put it bluntly, this isn't what the word "rational" means. Rationality is about taking the optimal path to a specified goal. It doesn't say anything about what that goal is. And that goal is always subjective and arbitrary, regardless of whether you are rational about achieving it.

So, in economics, they often talk about the rational, profit-maximizing business strategy. But "rational" and "profit-maximizing" are totally different things - maximizing profit is a subjective goal, and there are less and more rational ways to achieve it. I could just as easily talk about the rational cost-minimizing business strategy, which is a different objective that recommends a different path. Or an irrational profit-maximizing strategy that is clearly inferior for that goal.

So I dismiss your implicit claim that you are being more "rational" than an altruist who gives away all his money to the poor, because that's conflating the objective idea of rational decision-making with a subjective goal.

As a result, there's not really much for us to argue about, because it's not clear exactly how you've gotten to your conclusion, besides a misunderstanding of the word rational.

If you want to get into an empirical argument about humans, I think there's plenty of evidence that can change your view.

  • Humans are exceptionally cooperative and selfless among all life on earth. Very few organisms are as gregarious as humans or live in societies as large, and those that do are similarly oriented around "selfless" behaviors like participating in warfare.
  • humans are exceptionally selfless compared to other primates. Chimpanzees and bonobos live in dominance hierarchies in which the strong regularly appropriate the resources of the weak. As much as you can condemn human parallels like piracy and slavery, our species norm seems to be egalitarian forager groups that look nothing like chimp troops.
  • in social experiments, humans regularly forgo benefits because they perceive them as "unfair" to someone else. This is true for humans across cultures and across environments, even when taking the pot is clearly the rational "selfish" strategy.
  • under the right circumstances, humans are reliably willing to sacrifice their lives for non-kin, or even for abstract entities like nations or religions. The last three US Medal of Honor recipients died by literally jumping on hand grenades to save the lives of their fellow soldiers.

    It's no good to say people who jump on hand grenades or donate blood are "really" selfish because it makes them feel better or something, because you've essentially defined "selfish" to be "anything people do". If you take a stricter, more commonplace definition of selfish like "consistently chooses one's own material benefits at the expense of others'", then no, humans are exceptionally non-selfish among organisms on our planet.
u/kolm · 1 pointr/funny

I got this at home. Don't mess with me.

u/dankatheist420 · 1 pointr/ants

If you want to know EVERYTHING about ants, I recommend E.O. Wilson's The Ants.

However, this book is quite expensive and very dense. Journey to the Ants,also by Wilson, is a much better option for laypeople. It has almost all the information you're looking for, nice pictures, and is honestly very exciting to read. It captures the imagination and is very... inspirational! Check it out from a library if you can.

u/chaircrow · 1 pointr/RedditDayOf

It's narrated by Harrison Ford, if that flutters your geek flag. E.O. Wilson also helped write a pretty definitive ant book.

u/Ent- · 1 pointr/pics

If you like ants read this book. http://www.amazon.com/Ants-Bert-Holldobler/dp/0674040759
These two have devoted their entire lives ,Wilson from the age of 10 in order to study these creatures all over the world.