Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics

May 14, 2008 By LINDA STEWART BALL, Associated Press Writer
Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics (AP)

"Crazy rasberry ants" are shown Tuesday, May 13, 2008, in Deer Park, Texas. The ants are throwing off the balance of nature as they feast on beneficial insects, researchers say, noting that even the hatchlings of the endangered Attwater Prairie Chicken are at risk from these omnivores. They're invading homes and shorting out electrical boxes and electronics by getting their tiny bodies wedged into the intricate equipment. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

(AP) -- In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.



Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .

4.1 /5 (20 votes)  

Filter


Move the slider to adjust rank threshold, so that you can hide some of the comments.


Display comments: newest first

RoseM
May 15, 2008

Rank: 4.7 / 5 (3)
regarding the "Ants Swarm Over Houston" story, if you pour uncooked dry grits over the ants, that will kill them. Once the ants eat the grits, the grits will expand inside the ant bustiong it wide open. I tried this when I lived in Florida and had lots of ants in my house and in my yard. Took care of the problem immediately.
AngryLabRat
May 19, 2008

Rank: not rated yet
Well, that's a different sort of "computer bug"!

As I say in my blog post on this article, I've had ants infest my electronics, too, including a digital alarm clock. Little bastards!

See my blog post at: http://angrylabra...ug.html.
Rank 4.1 /5 (20 votes)
Tags

Relevant PhysicsForums posts

More news stories

The power of estrogen -- male snakes attract other males

A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest ...

Biology / Plants & Animals

created 14 hours ago | popularity 4.8 / 5 (6) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Grass to gas: Researchers' genome map speeds biofuel development

Researchers at the University of Georgia have taken a major step in the ongoing effort to find sources of cleaner, renewable energy by mapping the genomes of two originator cells of Miscanthus x giganteus, a large perenn ...

Biology / Biotechnology

created 11 hours ago | popularity 3.8 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Experts reveal how plants don't get sunburn

(PhysOrg.com) -- Experts at the University of Glasgow have discovered how plants survive the harmful rays of the sun.

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created 14 hours ago | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Miami battling invasion of giant African snails

No one knows how they got there. But an invasion of African giant snails has southern Florida in a panic over potential crop damage, disease and general yuckiness surrounding the slimy gastropods.

Biology / Ecology

created 18 hours ago | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 4

Protein libraries in a snap

(PhysOrg.com) -- A Rice University undergraduate will depart with not only a degree but also a possible patent for his invention of an efficient way to create protein libraries, an important component of biomolecular ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created 18 hours ago | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 0 | with audio podcast


Google users warned of threat to smartphone wallets

Users of Google smartphone wallets were being warned on Friday that there is a way to crack pass codes intended to thwart thieves from going on illicit shopping sprees.

Anonymous knocks CIA website offline (Update)

The website of the Central Intelligence Agency was inaccessible on Friday after the hacker group Anonymous claimed to have knocked it offline.

New error-correcting codes guarantee the fastest possible rate of data transmission

Error-correcting codes are one of the triumphs of the digital age. They’re a way of encoding information so that it can be transmitted across a communication channel — such as an optical fiber o ...

Humans may have helped the decline of African rainforests 3000 years ago

(PhysOrg.com) -- Large areas of rainforests in Central Africa mysteriously disappeared over three thousand years ago, to be replaced by savannas. The prevailing theory has been that the cause was a change ...

New power source discovered

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and RMIT University have made a breakthrough in energy storage and power generation.

Complex wiring of the nervous system may rely on a just a handful of genes and proteins

Researchers at the Salk Institute have discovered a startling feature of early brain development that helps to explain how complex neuron wiring patterns are programmed using just a handful of critical genes. ...