Well it may be time to revive this one since its spring and the ants are coming.

Heard about Crazy Raspberry ants that have invaded Texas big time. Seems they run around like lunatics, kill fire ants, eat plants, are immune to most pesticides, and are generally driving people nuts in the Lone Star State.

If any Texans are out there feel free to weigh in, the killer ants are back.

Did I mention that they are hairy too? YUK!

Just as a follow up these ants in Texas continue to get press. It seems they like electrical current and they are attacking people's home lines and equipment, so computers and such are going down. NASA in Houston is worried that they may cause a disruption to their operations.

Honestly, you can't make this stuff up.

Your Texas ants made the paper here in the UK today.
It says they are indistructable.

Your all doomed i tell thee.

Indestructable, just like this thread...

There was an item on NPR about them yesterday. I think they've mostly been found around Houston so far. As was mentioned, the one good thing about this is that they seem to be killing off the fire ants that have been plagueing the state. The crazy ants do bite but don't have the poisonous sting of the fire ants.

The ants haven't made it to San Antonio yet from what I've heard. Something to look forward to.

-Bob-

a Mysterious new strain of ant that eats electric componants and is near NASA and Silicone valley.
Sound like Alien Intervention to me. Someone call The Doctor.

Wasn't there a film years ago about intelligent ants that became immune to the things that were supposed to destroy them.?

Here's one of the news reports.


Computers at risk from Crazy Raspberry ants: Houston, we have a problem.

Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld (US online) 16 May 2008

A flood of voracious ants is heading straight for Houston, taking out computers, radios and even vehicles in their path.

Even the Johnson Space Center has called in extermination experts to keep the pests out of their sensitive and critical systems.

The ants have been causing all kinds of trouble in five Texas counties in and around the Gulf Coast. Because of their sheer numbers, the ants are short circuiting computers in homes and offices, and knocking systems offline in major businesses. When IT personnel pry the affected computers open, they find the machines loaded with thousands of ant bodies.

"These ants are raising havoc," said Roger Gold, professor of entomology at Texas A&M University in College Station. "They're foraging for food and they'll go into any space looking for it. In the process, they make their way into sensitive equipment."

The ants have been dubbed Crazy Raspberry ants after Tom Rasberry, owner of Budget Pest Control in Pearland, Texas. He first tackled this particular type of ant back in 2002. Since then, the problem has only escalated.

Rasberry told Techworld's sister publication, Computerworld, that the ants have caused a lot of trouble for one Texas chemical company in particular. Not wanting to name the company, he said the ants shorted out three different computers that were running a pipeline that brought chemicals into the plant. The ants took down two computers last year and one in 2006, affecting flow in the pipeline each time.

"I think they go into everything and they don't follow any kind of structured line," said Rasberry. "If you open a computer, you would find a cluster of ants on the motherboard and all over. You'd get 3,000 or 4,000 ants inside and they create arcs. They'll wipe out any computer."

The Johnson Space Center called in Rasberry a month or two ago in an attempt to keep the ants out of their facilities. Too late. Rasberry said he's found three colonies at the NASA site, but all have been small enough to control.

'With the computer systems they have in there, it could devastate the facility," said Rasberry. "If these ants got into the facility in the numbers they have in other locations, well, it would be awful. I've been in this business for 32 years and this is unlike anything I've ever seen. Anything. When you bring in entomologists from all over the United States and they're in shock and awe, that shows you what it's like."

The Johnson Space Center referred all questions about the ants to Rasberry.

The ants, which are tiny and reddish, aren't native to Texas. Officials believe they came off a ship from the Caribbean, said Paul Nester, a programme specialist with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service. They were first spotted about six years ago.

Gold said in the last few years they've spread in a radius of about 50 miles. And now they're moving into Houston, the fourth-largest city in the country.

"Fifty miles might not seem like a lot until you realize they're moving into Houston," said Gold. "It could really affect a lot of people's lives."

A big problem here, noted Nester, is how quickly their numbers are multiplying.

A queen fire ant, long a problem in Texas, can lay as many as 1,000 eggs a day, he said. The Crazy Raspberry ants are thought to be as prolific. However, an ant mound normally has one queen. The new ants have many queens so they're able to multiply their ranks that much more quickly. They also don't go to the trouble of building ant hills. They simply nest under anything they can find - a log, a tire or a pet's water bowl and then they quickly move on as they spread further into the state.

Nester said the ants swarmed into trucks at a shipping company, shorting out the radios and even the vehicles themselves.

Gold said the ants got into an engine compartment at a sewage treatment plant and shorted out the pumps so they couldn't move the sewage out. He added that they've also overrun a subdivision and caused a lot of electrical damage to houses there.

Part of the problem is that exterminators have found it nearly impossible to kill the ants. Oh, you can kill some of them - the first wave, maybe. However, there are so many more ants coming behind them, that the first wave falls dead in the insecticide and the subsequent waves merely walk on the dead bodies, keeping themselves out of the poison and safe from harm.

Gold warned people not to spray pesticide inside their computers and to simply call in the professionals to prevent mixing up poisonous concoctions or storing the potentially harmful partly used insecticides.

Parasitic flies turn fire ants into zombies

It sounds like something out of science fiction: zombie fire ants. But it's all too real.

Fire ants wander aimlessly away from the mound.

Eventually their heads fall off, and they die.

The strange part is that researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M's AgriLife Extension Service say making "zombies" out of fire ants is a good thing.

"It's a tool — they're not going to completely wipe out the fire ant, but it's a way to control their population," said Scott Ludwig , an integrated pest management specialist with the AgriLife Extension Service in Overton , in East Texas .

The tool is the tiny phorid fly, native to a region of South America where the fire ants in Texas originated. Researchers have learned that there are as many as 23 phorid species along with pathogens that attack fire ants to keep their population and movements under control.

So far, four phorid species have been introduced in Texas .

The flies "dive-bomb" the fire ants and lay eggs. The maggot that hatches inside the ant eats away at the brain, and the ant starts exhibiting what some might say is zombie-like behavior.

"At some point, the ant gets up and starts wandering," said Rob Plowes, a research associate at UT.

The maggot eventually migrates into the ant's head, but Plowes said he "wouldn't use the word 'control' to describe what is happening. There is no brain left in the ant, and the ant just starts wandering aimlessly. This wandering stage goes on for about two weeks."

About a month after the egg is laid, the ant's head falls off and the fly emerges ready to attack any foraging ants away from the mound and lay eggs.

Plowes said fire ants are "very aware" of these tiny flies, and it only takes a few to cause the ants to modify their behavior.

"Just one or two flies can control movement or above-ground activity," Plowes said. "It's kind of like a medieval activity where you're putting a castle under siege."

Researchers began introducing phorid species in Texas in 1999. The first species has traveled all the way from Central and South Texas to the Oklahoma border. This year, UT researchers will add colonies south of the Metroplex at farms and ranches from Stephenville to Overton . It is the fourth species introduced in Texas .

Fire ants cost the Texas economy about $1 billion annually by damaging circuit breakers and other electrical equipment, according to a Texas A&M study. They can also threaten young calves.

Determining whether the phorid flies will work in Texas will take time, perhaps as long as a decade.

"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."

The flies, which are USDA -approved, do not attack native ants or species and have been introduced in other Gulf Coast states, Plowes said. Despite initial concerns, farmers and ranchers have been willing to let researchers use their property to establish colonies. At the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association in Fort Worth in March, Plowes said they found plenty of volunteers.

Source: Yahoo News