Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Weird Ants Overrun Houston

Now this is a strange story about something called crazy rasberry ants and how they seem to be terrorizing Houston residents.

Worse, they, like some other species of ants, are attracted to electrical equipment, for reasons that are not well understood by scientists.

They have ruined pumps at sewage pumping stations, fouled computers and at least one homeowner's gas meter, and caused fire alarms to malfunction. They have been spotted at NASA's Johnson Space Center and close to Hobby Airport, though they haven't caused any major problems there yet.

I wonder why these ants are attracted to electricity like this. Perhaps it is related to the chemical control network that gets ants to behave in colonies and take care of their queen. Or maybe there is some frequency given off by these devices that the ants pick up on their antennae. It is just strange that an ant would eat a non-food object just because there is electricity flowing through it.

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