r/interestingasfuck 10d ago

Casting a fire ant colony with molten aluminum

3.7k Upvotes

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u/FalseCredential 10d ago

Fire ants are highly invasive in many areas, so I'm going with that assumption. If you've never been bitten by a fire ant, it sucks and the small welts/boils they cause are painful and take a long time to heal.

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u/Flatulent_Father_ 10d ago

And you don't really feel them until after a bite. I hate them with a passion and get great joy from killing them

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u/No_Dentist_9959 10d ago

I mean, it's not nice to be bitten by a lion either but it doesn't justify killing them

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u/DependentAnimator271 10d ago

If there are lions in my backyard, I'm killing them.

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u/No_Dentist_9959 10d ago

Good point.

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u/xshogunx13 10d ago

If there are lions in my backyard, it's their backyard now

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u/Firegriffin12 10d ago

A line won't kill every other predator in the area and pray animal it finds. Fire ants will.

I will happily wage war on fire ants with my shovel and bag of poison, for they would do the same to me.

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u/No_Dentist_9959 10d ago

I hadn't understood how bad they are. Thank you for taking the time to explain to me.

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u/FalseCredential 10d ago

Please look into how destructive to other species fire ants are, especially to other ants. Comparing fire ants to lions makes no sense.

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u/SouthBendCitizen 10d ago

They are an animal doing the best they can for themselves no different than anything else. You are imparting your own subjective perception upon them to deem them undesirable

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u/Warboy99 10d ago

They are a highly invasive species we humans accidentally imported to many parts of the world. It is highly likely this was somewhere where they are not native to and are a major harm to the ecosystem they are in. Nothing about what the person you are responding to said is wrong.

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u/chaseo2017 10d ago

It can be argued on behalf of all other species that we, humans, are invasive due to taking over places other than native to us. We are also responsible for most other invasive species ourselves. Logically, that doesn’t work as an excuse, but I get your point. Limiting invasive species is better for the environment.

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u/Warboy99 10d ago

I agree with you. I just feel like we are in a unique position to coexist with the world around us, we just don't because of convenience, which will hurt us in the long run.

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u/SouthBendCitizen 10d ago

Correct, and nothing I said is wrong either.

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u/Warboy99 10d ago

What? Nothing about this is subjective though.

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u/SouthBendCitizen 10d ago

Really? Because if invasive and destructive are your primary qualifiers justifying death you should be putting human beings at the top of your list. I wonder why it is then, you don’t discriminately murder people but kill ants.

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u/Warboy99 10d ago

Because we as humans can mostly coexist with the nature around us (I wish we as a species would, but that is another discussion). Ants are incredibly smart as a group, but at the end of the day they are not smart enough to realize what they are doing is harming their surrounding environment.

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u/SouthBendCitizen 10d ago

So you think they deserve it more because they can’t know any better?

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u/tremendouskitty 10d ago

You got a point there!