Comic Strips
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- AI-generated comics aren't allowed.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world: "I use Arch btw"
- !memes@lemmy.world: memes (you don't say!)
The people that were doing this weren't using concrete...
They were using molten metal.
I always thought it was extremely hot aluminum poured into them.
It could be any liquid that hardens later on. I've seen aluminum and concrete.
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 are invasive in most places except for a relatively small part of South America
TBH if you live somewhere where fire ants are native, MOVE.
I'm not going to let the ants win.
The way I understood it, invasive simply meant a species that grows and spreads at an aggressive speed in an ecosystem that it did not originate from. Fire ants very much match this definition as they were introduced outside of south Africa into several ecosystems where they spread at an aggressive rate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_of_the_World%27s_Worst_Invasive_Alien_Species has a nice list of examples of species that are simply classified as invasive. Fire ants are on the top 100 list there.
That being said, while fire ants are not invasive to South Africa technically, this can be said about all species in the world (that they're not invasive to SOMEWHERE). I didn't feel the need to say where I was located in my message since it felt redundant, and as the term invasive should be assumed to talk about how whatever it is, is invasive to somewhere else, wherever that is.
you're doing a genocide
Yes, if you are dumb about it. Actual scientists doing this use abandoned colonies or move the colony first.
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.
"Normally"!? I thought it was a one-time thing for that famous youtube video.
There are thousands of ant hill sculptures in the world.
The two main ways of making them are either aluminum or some sort of concrete or plaster.
Aluminum is used more often, due to the ease of extraction from the ground, and the fact that you can clean it with a garden hose or pressure washer.
Cement or plaster are used when accuracy is desired, but those sculptures need to be removed from the ground with hand trowels and brushes, and will likely need individual parts to be reinforced or braced to prevent breakage.
Both methods can be used to study the structure of and ant hill. But aluminum far more common for the more artistic versions of the sculpture.
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 think I remember that setting concrete has an exothermic reaction going on so you could be cooked as you suffocate.
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.!
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 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.
I wouldn't think concrete is thin or viscous enough
Additionally, thin pieces of concrete are very brittle. It is much more common to use molten aluminum.
Believe they also look for hills that have been moved out of, but I'm sure that's not always true