Hmm, would this work with any clear material so you could see the ants as they suffer? I mean, for uhhh… science?
You’d pick up a lot of sand… Normally you’d use a metal like aluminum. You can sandblast that clean.
But clear means epoxy. That stuff doesn’t hold up very well under sandblasting. It can be done, but expect mistakes.
It’s “what it looks like” or “how it looks”, never “how it looks like”. That’s as dumb as “what it looks”, which I’m sure most people understand isn’t correct.
It’s one thing to make that mistake in a random comment, but in your fucking web comic? Seriously?Calm down dude…
Came here to say that. #noChildLeftBehind, right?
Yeah, hearing about this technique for the first time was a ride. Like, yeah, it’s kind of cool? But also, you’re doing a genocide.
Invasive ants can overwhelm and genocide native ants.
A lot of the castings I’ve seen have specifically been done on invasive ants for this reason.
I wanted to comment on fire ants for this (which are an invasive one). Anyone who has experienced fire ants would not feel sorry for a genocide on them.
It’s impossible for fire ants to be invasive in general.
They’re invasive to SOMEWHERE. We don’t all live in the same neighbourhood.
They’re more like a single superorganism.
So are humans. We still call mass killings of humans a genocide. There’s no really good reason to make an exception for ants.
You don’t think it cheapens the word “genocide” just a bit to lump an ant hill cast and the holocaust under the same umbrella term?
Technically it’s the same, but if we want to apply emotion to human genocide, then what word would we alternatively use to describe eradicating a colony of beings we don’t care enough about?
Humans aren’t a superorganism by a longshot.
you’re doing a genocide
Yes, if you are dumb about it. Actual scientists doing this use abandoned colonies or move the colony first.
I always thought it was extremely hot aluminum poured into them.
extremely hot
Melted?
Molted?
To shreds, you say?
*n
nolted?
Evaporated?
Gaseous state
deleted by creator
Could be worse. Could be the guy filling them with copper or whatever molten metal it was on YT.
I would probably prefer getting almost instantly fried by molten hot metal than slowly suffucate in liquid cement
I suspect the amount of the nest that gets affected is larger. (Technically, IIRC theyre mostly there to exterminate the ants, it’s just becoming art in the process.!
I think I remember that setting concrete has an exothermic reaction going on so you could be cooked as you suffocate.
Probably a different instance to the one you’re thinking, but I have not forgotten that TechRax video of him pouring molten aluminum onto live hissing cockroaches. I don’t even know why he added the cockroaches, the subject of the video was the iPhone 6 vs molten aluminum.
Oh yea, I still remember that one, I hate cockroaches, but that video kinda disgusted me. Like… why torture other living things for nothing?
That’s horrifying, what the actual fuck.
I think I was These guys. Could be wrong, but part of what they’re doing is removing nests that are problematic to humans (or our cattle.)
I wonder what kind of concrete you’d use because I feel like any type I can think of would be too brittle and would break apart during even the most careful excavation.
It’s aluminum.
I would imagine for any significantly sized colony, molten metal would cool down and solidify too fast to cover everywhere; whereas concrete can stay liquid long enough to permeate everywhere.
The moisture would get sucked out of the concrete by the earth, and it’s not flowable that well. If you’ve made it like soup, it’s lost most of its strength when it cures already.
A 1/2 hole in plywood gets filled by grout pretty fast, a dirt ant tunnel I would be surprised if it went more than a foot to be honest.
It seems implausible to me, too (as an engineer), but the article says what it says. I guess they must be using tiny paint brushes like an archeological dig in order to excavate it without destroying it.
