Typhoons and flooding are excellent at relocating the fauna.
Clearing trees on one of our fields this typhoon that had a camera on it. Starting feeling super itchy, wasnt mosquitoes…
oh wow. Amazing where they will be able to climb into. those cameras are meant to be totally sealed, no?
Ya haha, at least thats what the manual claims… Ants always amaze me.
How they didn’t got fried when shortcutting the batteries?
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very low transmission of current across an ant’s cuticle. they’re pretty tough. not much moisture in the feet.
hard to use electric fences to contain ants. I could do that with breeding buckets of cockroaches, with a 9 V battery, but not with ants. We had to use vaseline barriers for them, and usually water moats and other barriers too.
Ants love elteical stuff. Switch boxes, circuit breakers/panels you name it. But the camera is sold a a hunting game cam and sealed from blah blah blah. Thats why it was so funny. In the middle of typhoon the decent sized tree it was wired to broke in half while i was towing stuff out. I used 2mm thick tie wire to wrap it on the tree and that broke, not the plastic case. Tough gadget. But ants figured it out right quick within 24h…
Urodacus
Ive had issues with vaseline and ants. Same with moats for some species. They make corpse rafts. We have a big vivarium in the works i am dieing to include termites or ants in. But worried about their chewing and waterproofing. Any experience/opinions?
For roaches vaseline is a miracle. I swear guests get the wrong impression visiting a house of an invert keeper.
Edit. Though not as amazing but still cool to see. Hundreds of these have sprouted up today around tree bases and high ground at that farm. I expect a good toad year this winter 
We had to keep all long term ant colonies 100% locked up. Tupperware-style. some success with Vaseline barriers for some tiny species, but if bigger ones want to get out, they just build a pyramid and escape. and as you say, they raft across moats. Moats seemed to be OK as a secondary barrier, like sitting the box of ants in a bigger box of water.
another useful thing for open top (usually glass terraria) was a line of Fluon, that teflon paint, as an edge barrier. Not an advert, just damn good stuff. but i’d be wary of relying on this as the only barrier. maybe used in conjunction with a close fitting glass lid, and make sure to keep stuff from scraping it off.
I’ve seen some nightmares with fire ant colony break-outs. Check out some YouTubes for that.
Thats great thanks! I havent heard of that paint before, keen to try it out. Normally i keep the legs of the rack in a dish of water. Often spiked with something nasty. But there is always a wire, fibre, hair etc they use to get out.
Im never going to keep fire anta. Once i had them invade tub of roaches and make quick work of them. They also tend to be in my driveway and taking over pots with cactus and succulents. Not a fan of this sp…!
Why would anyone keep fire ants or have a tub of roaches.
Hungry?
No, I bred roaches for use in insecticide experiments (at an insecticide research facility at university). Plus i used them in my own research, as a source of insect nerve preparations for researching effects of scorpion and spider toxins. We had 3 different species, (German, American, and Smoky-Brown), and also a small family of burrowing cockroaches as pets. They’re cute and, well, not quite cuddly.
Ants were kept for much the same purpose, and one or two species of bull ants were kept for venom research. Big fuckers, very painful bite and sting (especially if you stand on a nest unawares. believe me…) We had M.pilosula and M.gulosa, I think.
Fire ants are kept by some hobbyists because they exhibit amazing behaviors. Other species too, less dangerous than fire ants. Probably for the same reason that some people keep coral snakes and cobras as pets, rather than corn snakes or ball pythons.
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Can anyone identify this (breed, etc.)?
I was at home (13th floor) just relaxing, and I felt something on my neck. Nothing big, just something itching. So, I just flicked it off and it felt like something light, like a popcorn shell.
After one hour or so, it started to feel reddish and burning from the back of my neck going around almost until my Adam’s apple. From red it turns to dark purple with few white spots, and it started itching, too.
I went to check with a doctor and it happens that what I thought it was nothing, was in fact a 隱翅蟲 (rove beetle?)
This #@*$& somehow flew up to my home just to bit me in the neck! It took me few days before the itching and reddishness went away, and some co-workers even thought my wife had something to do with that, as it looked like a hickey on my neck…
The above is not my picture, but I found out this is not uncommon in Taiwan
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Rove beetles are very common. They are actually a useful bug but can cause discomfort. Never seen purple though. It wod be worth taking a pic of yourself for a record to show the doc.
I remember one time after a logging operation we went in to clear some land and i was running the wood chipper. Usua 30 something degrees and in full sun so sweaty, hot and a 10 hour direct sunburn. Next to my eye felt an itch. So wiped it away. The following days caused scabbing and cracking skin/bleeding due to the skin healing process. I swore it was because my safety glasses acted as a magnifying glass and amplified it to that part of the face. Went to pharmacy to get some sleeping pills as sun stroke tends to cause lack of sleep severely and the lady said rove beetle. Once said it was so obvious and i remember wiping my face of sweat and stinging after. Long story short, ita not their bite it when you smear thier juices on you skin. Locals, if they notice, tend to use tissue or something to quickly flick it off the smin. Never hit it. I had a good 10cm scar for over a year from that bugger.
But they are actually useful in agriculture…we allow them in to breed and make the farms of taiwan more sustainable and profitable 
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that leaf mimic is awesome!
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Ya, it is really something special. I had no idea they existed, was a wonderful surprise!
Those are long! They must be picking up signals from the cosmos…
I really like that silhouette picture. Very nice
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I don’t know how to focus on my phone’s camera. (too small or something?) so i did it the creative way… Silhouette… Thanks😊 found it while weeding my potted palm tree.
