Australia has a crazy ant problem | ABC News
One of the world’s worst invasive species is multiplying in their billions in Australia. Yellow Crazy Ants spit acid and annihilate native wildlife, and experts are worried they’re here to stay. Subscribe: / abcnewsindepth Read more here: ab.co/3KVxcTR
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Here in the states we have been bombarded with fire ants. Many of us use Boric Acid, purchased cheaply, into which we add 1/4 of powder sugar to the 3/4 boric acid mixture, and sprinkle it onto the top of fire ant nest. The powder sugar attracts them to take the boric acid into their nest and to the eggs and queen. They cannot digest boric acid, and therefore swell up and die. Hope this helps you, down under!
Fire Ants are from South America.
@@JustAnother_Opinion You took the words right out of my mouth. Thank you.🤣
Fire ants been here forever
Also using diatomaceous earth helps. Using this “dust” and applying it in reachable and unreachable places kills them by cutting into their exoskeleton bodies and literally drying them out. “… Diatomaceous earth is a type of powder made from the sediment of fossilized algae found in bodies of water. Because the cells of these algae were high in a compound called silica, the dried sediment produced from these fossils are also very high in silica. These deposits are found all over the world Diatomaceous earth contains about 80%-90% silica. Diatomaceous earth is thought to kill insects by dehydrating them or drying them out. …”
So glad to see your comment as they didn't mention any ways of defeating them in this video!
When I was in Brazil, I was staying at the top of a massive hotel, it had like 30 floors or more. And guess what I found in my room? Yellow crazy ants. They're like the terminator of ants. Edit: I just realised it was actually the Pharaoh ant. lol.
😳 That’s extremely disturbing!
wrrr
Im an Aussie native ant keeper and I hate seeing invasive species of ants drive out the native ones as well as wildlife. Its good to make videos about this and you explained well how the ants operate.
Are there any native or other plants you can grow that would deter them?
@@wefsux nope. thats why they are such a problem. There is nothing to stop the growth of population.
@mike sprigg Nope your not. But the thing is, on every place on this planet where humans have settled, native humans of that land have been driven out. Every continent and country on this earth has the same history. Non have been spared. That just says that no matter where you go, humans are humans to each other.
@@SusanKay- ..
What’s an “ant keeper,” and why?
One of the results of "globalization"....in Florida we're absolutely overrun with invasive species of insects, plants, reptiles and fish..
This does not talk about control regimes either in action or a strategy being planned. Briefly there is the mention of baits being handed out, but nothing more.
Yeah it was pretty disappointing in that respect.
Look up using urine to fight ants. It has been used with fire ants. It's a real thing! Possibly it could be used in this battle. We all have it, and it's being flushed on the toilet. Why not collect it and use this to fight back? Just pour it down their antholes. A different one every day!
Im sure some one is on it...
I have read a study, on Christmas Island 🇨🇽 (the one with the giant crabs) they released a wasp that eats the little bugs that the ants farm (you see them in the video) so the ants starve. The wasps are made sterile, so they don’t establish themselves on the island, they just eat a lot of tree-bugs and die. Repeated releases has caused the population of yellow crazy ants to shrink, it’s an undergoing intervention. I don’t know if this can be replicated on the mainland.
A couple of years ago, we had a lot of bushfires in New South Wales in Australia. In Canberra, the very thick smoke settled on us for about a week. Since then, we have had no ants near our house. We used to have sugar ants, medium sized ants and tiny ants. Now we have none.
You mean 2 years ago?
@@Kibbuster Two is a couple
That's the solution then...burn down everywhere that there are yellow crazy ants.
some ant species are good, they kill pests and loosen the soil. you just want to get rid of the bad ants.
@@strangevisions5162 That’s the problem. How to destroy one species without affecting the good ants (and maybe they could take the house dwelling ant colonies while they’re at it). We need a yellow crazy & fire ant specific pied piper & a large trap for them that neutralises their acid. But there must be some natural predators wherever they originated, or they’d have surely spread long ago & causes devastation in the countries they came from. Then we just have to hope that they will eat the right ants & nothing else & not displace other species. Complex problem indeed 🤔
Lost in the Amazon jungle for a week all I lived on were caterpillars. When rescuers arrived I became so excited I got butterflies in my stomach.
😁😂🤣😅
🤣🤣🤣
@@carollynt 🎼The Ants are my friends… is blowing in the wind 🎼
Am I the only one who got that after a year?
I love it when I get to learn ecology from Australia. Here in the US, we had a guy using RF fields to control and direct ants. It was biophysics from Kansas, in case any Aussie wants to follow up.
I imagine that's only good for repelling them from homes and certain places.
@@zinknot Doesn’t that solve some of this problem?
@@willjennings7191 NO it does not 'solve' the problem It only moves the problem to another location where it propagates further and thus increases the magnitude of the problem. Providing temporary relief is NOT a remedy. You fail to understand that
@@andrew_koala2974 No, the ants invade human territory, then you apply deterrent. The ants do not increase in magnitude after being deterred, the population shrinks after losing access to food. You could do the RF fields near a home or throughout a national park. You drive the ants and then use pesticide where they cluster. This is not hard.
Give it 100 years and I doubt that people would be able to live in Australia.
Would have been nice to include some info about what is being done....
Look up using urine to fight ants. It has been used with fire ants. It's a real thing! Possibly it could be used in this battle. We all have it, and it's being flushed on the toilet. Why not collect it and use this to fight back? Just pour it down their antholes. A different one every day!
you didn't pay attention. 9:49 They are hoping.
Dawn we are exporting them to Russia.
@@robertbutler8004 😁👍
Australian problem solving flowchart Ignore the problem Deny the problem Shoot the problem Rinse and repeat
Nice to hear about this problem. But maybe some solutions should be outlined. It seems like hope was the only thing they mentioned
Typical bureaucratic BS. "Hey people, we have a problem here. Can we get a few $M to study it and see how fast they can destroy our ecosystem?" Instead of going head first into destroying them. Everyone who deals with ants knows that boric acid and borax will destroy a colony of ants pretty quick depending on its size. But hey, there is no money in that.
Give unlimited supply of firecrakers to kids. Well, it would have worked 35 yrs ago.
I have a sneaky suspicion Australia is too worried about environmental damage and climate change to think about actually using poison.
@@bobalicious2696 The ants are already destroying the environment. Boric acid and Borax in small quantities arent poi$onous, but if they are still triggered mix baking soda and sugar or give them corn meal. Both will do the job.
They are giving out little ant traps. That should solve the problem (NOT).
In the 70's and 80's Australia did not have this problem. I was working as a Pest Control operator at the time, and ant control during that period was minimal. Chemicals we used in that time, gave excellent cover for many many years, thus ensuring once eradicated they'd be gone. With the increase of Containers, we were faced with a major issue. In the early days when container traffic was just begining, containers were FUMIGATED at the Port before being released for delivery. Fumigated containers required 24 hrs before release. With the massive increase of containers, it became extremely difficult to fumigate every container, then many containers were simply released. All of a sudden we discovered European wood borer, and these ants as well as many other insects we never had before. Chemicals we used remained active for 30 to 40 years if left undisturbed, nowadays such chemicals are banned. Chemicals allowed to buy for ant control these days, are very expensive and useless for long term control. They only last 3 monthss then the ants come back.
SHIPPING CONTAINERS Learn to be accurate and specific. A glass jar and a cardboard box are also containers. Learn to describe things accurately and not be mentally lazy People more intelligent than you will compensate for your laziness Some will call you out on it and smack you
@@andrew_koala2974 Learn to chill, Inebriated the Koala. Container traffic doesn't tend to refer to Tupperware.
@@andrew_koala2974 he said container you muppet.
@@andrew_koala2974 "Learn to be accurate and specific." everyone but you knew what he meant by containers
@@andrew_koala2974 Learn what narcissism is and realise that it applies to you. Mate, you are full of it and you are a long way from being the smartest in the room.
For the ant problem use diatomatious earth. It can be sprayed as a powdered cloud.
Diatomaceous, my phone has spellcheck
Paul Stammets has created a pesticide using fungi that target specific species and destroys them all at once. I’d be curious to see how well it would work down under.
That's Awesome.
Umm. Okay.
@@Kayenne54 Umm, it's true. Certain fungi can kill the ants, and its said that using fungacides in areas where the crazy ants are invading,(such as gardens and containerized plants), is discouraged if you want to eradicate their populations. As an avid gardener I'll take a fungus over these little assholes any day. (They feed on plants too)
US biologists were able to eradicate them from Johnston Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, but of course that's just an atoll .. however, they did a good job in protecting the sea birds.
So, how did they do it?
@@DrJohnPollard Unfortunately it would be extremely hard to replicate. They were continiously using different baits with trial and error, specially trained dogs that coudl find underground nests, and physical monitoring to ensure eradication. And the containment protocols to access the island are next level, like having to wear new clothes that have been through a decontamination procedure like being frozen (and obvioulsy thawed).
@@ericburton5163 Okay. Thanks.
@@DrJohnPollard Nuclear testing and chemical agents.
My mom's house had Big Red Ant Hills so had her buy me a bottle of dish soap every week and poured it right in..took care of them fast!
Mix 1.5 cups water, 1 cup sugar and 1 tablespoon borax. Pour a small amount into plastic caps and lay them around the infestation. The ants will drink it, take it to the nest to regurgitate, eventually killing the nest. It takes just a few days.
For some reason everything I've looked at today is all doom, gloom, despair and desecration. 😧🥺
There's some Jimmy Darts guy who gives out $500 to people on here. Look him up
In other words, just another day on planet Earth.
@@joeKisonue Thank you for bucking the trend of negativity & self-pity by throwing this suggestion in here. Good on You Friend 😃
@@joeKisonue How can you say that? Set 'Autoplay', let the videos run and come back in half an hour. I guarantee there'll be kittens on your screen.
Then you won’t want to know that MURDER HORNET season is here!😳
with Australia's track record this isn't looking too good lol
First spotted in 1980. More than forty years later and fingers crossed maybe doing nothing will finally work at eradicating them
There is no coal money in environmental protection so who gives a crap.
These ants sound like human beings.
Except they actually work together.
Good luck. Here in the southern U.S. fire ants are eating us up.
I wish they talked about how the Yellow Crazy Ants are held in check where they are native.
Big problem, how about solutions?
David Gray’s spray from Bunnings is the only solution I have found the gets rid of them.
I am by no means an ecologist so maybe my idea would create more of a disaster than it would fix, but what about shipping loads of cane toads into the affected areas? Not sure...maybe it would create more problems than it would fix but it's the best I can do for the moment.
We do have a lot of these at home here in the philippines. We have a very large yard and whenever we see a part where they stay, we normally pour hot boiling water to the are everyday until they die and the rest leave. So far it has been a success over the years. But for the crabs. I feel sorry for those wonderful creatures. A different solution should be in order to keep the crab species there🥺
Can I vote for you to be my president in the next election?
Uni is not be up with a lot about this email is not be fine frisk edification Wei I have am so is x7iuxdudyryidèerßß ID
They're not invasive in the Philippines. It's part of their native range,
Everyone must have an anteater!
boiling water - and lots of it is needed to penetrate the soil into the ants nest- as the soil absorbs and cools the water - hence lots of hot water is required we also need to know what naturally occurring compounds can be used to destroy the ant colonies - Hot water for now perhaps mixed with some Ethylene Glycol fro now is a solution - Though Ethylene Glycol is toxic to all animals who would drink the water containing Ethylene Glycol - So Hot Water ALONE is a safer 'remedy'
7:17 do we have an intelligence problem with complaining about ants - yet going out barefoot?
The USA has been plague with Intelligence problems since 2016. 🤪
I grew up in tropical country with all kinds of bugs and pests. One thing to scare them away is heat, we always have bonfire of sort... fire or smoke get rid of those pesky little buggers.
Yeah right mate -- you haven't thought that idea through very well have you? How do you plan to do that with trillions of those ants, where 95% of them are underground or in trees??
Uhuh. Fire in Australia. What could possibly go wrong?
@@montinaladine3264 if you use the fire solution during winter, you wouldn't have to freeze...while eating roasted ants 🤷🏼🍻
Australia seems to always losing against invasive species, from feral cats, feral rabbits, feral camel, swarm of rats, and now ants...
Not to mention ‘human beings’…We are the worst invasive species on the planet..!
Australia is a microcosm of what is happening everywhere. It's more noticeable on islands and Australia is just a giant island, being geographically isolated as it is. Once introduced, an invasive species is almost impossible to remove and the repair the damage. Nature had millions of years to perfect the ecosystems. Then came humans, who thought they knew better than Nature. The majority of us are just parasites and contribute nothing to our environment except tons of trash.
She'll be right mate!
@RichoPutra ~ Don't forget the cane toads.
And don't forget cruel feral humans.
I’m sure those ants look up & despair about those ‘crazy people’…!
Welp, that’s FNQ gone. People get triggered by spiders but the sight of all that crawling makes my skin itch. I wonder if there’s any rentals on Antarctica?
Just go to the Australian Antarctic program website and see if they have any jobs open. As an American, I am vaguely aware that a good handyman who is crazy enough to sign up could get $60k-$80k a year working at McMurdo (the closest thing to a town in Antarctica), but I am not sure about opportunities for Australians.
@@hypothalapotamus5293 Since more of Antarctica is under Australian protection than any other country... yes there are job opportunities there.
Release the anteaters.
this needs to be fixed before it gets even worse
Not gonna happen. Politicians like to have potential disasters to base their election campaigns on averting while , when elected they just say, "Yea, that's a real problem. And we are going to need $millions to study it." Colonies that big have to eat, and they have to eat a lot so giving people tiny ant traps to avert the problem is the problem itself. Most ants either eat sugars or fats. Find out which and bait the area with hundreds of pounds of treated food for them and wait until it works. It might take a year or two to wipe out a colony of billions of ants just because of the newly hatched ants arriving each day. Talking about it does absolutely nothing except wasting $M on perpetual studies.
It's not going to be fixed. "For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places" (Matthew 24:7, KJV). The key word is "pestilences," or "pests" for short. We're going to see more and more things like that and it's going to get much worse.
@@davidlafleche1142 ?
Everyone must have an anteater. Anteaters must be in every home.
@@davidlafleche1142 pestilence means plague, not pests
Boric acid and honey works a treat.
I'm in Canada and we are having an ant issue. I've never seen so many ants before. Also. Where are all the other insects and bugs? I've seen like one little white butterfly for like the past month now. Nothing else. Except fruit flies. Haven't even seen house flies. No bees. No wasps. Don't hear any crickets, no grasshoppers. wtf is going on?
I'm in BC. Same thing here! Climate change for sure. Insect populations are falling dramatically.
Same omfg.
Same here in Aus, nothing what so ever around street lights either.
@@oliviachipperfield6029 Yep, we're all screwed basically.
You are in the Great mass Extinction event/ Biodiversity Collapse . In Short The Human Enterprise is wiping out all competitor's for their own fossil fuelled fantasies of Grandiosity. WASTE maladaptive and Antithetical to LIFE... STOP Creating WASTE or go EXTINCT... Simple really.
Bring in the anteaters.
I don't think there are enough anteaters to solve the problem.
I'm in the United states, in south Carolina, I have a cabin in the woods and I have crazy black ants, they are bigger than the red and yellow crazy ants. Spilled something sweet on my kitchen floor next morning there was a few on the floor, came back inside a couple hours later and floor was covered in large black ants. Fortunately, it seems they do not bite like the red and yellow ones.
What I want to know is what is being done to prevent the spread further throughout Australia? As they said, it's us that spread them, so I hope they are introducing strong restrictions such as transporting dirt from place to place.
While that may restrict other invasiv species in the future, for this species it looks like it is too late to hold them back that way. We humans are just not particular good in estimating the outcome of our actions or choose to ignore those to make some money. Then again there were times where you could not easily move certain things from nation to nation, though for different reasons. Imagine how much bacterias, spores of fungus and other things could be in foods and then look no further than amazon to imagine how this shit gets shipped all around the world. I live in europe and i can buy dried peppers from mexico and i got no clue how they were treaded there. Just to name one example and there a millions more.
Look up using urine to fight ants. It has been used with fire ants. It's a real thing! Possibly it could be used in this battle. We all have it, and it's being flushed on the toilet. Why not collect it and use this to fight back?
@@kinngrimm Then why not disavow everything human and go live in a cave somewhere. Go forage for food, etc., as man did before civilization advanced like it has today. Live the kind of life you long for without making "some money."
@bridge224 That's something people around the world have tried with other pests, and they only served introduce new problems without solving old ones. Checkout mongoose problems in Japan.
@Davemike27 They do that kind of thing in customs for cargo import. “The Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment uses a range of scientific, intelligence and evidence based information when setting the measures for managing the risks associated with arriving goods and cargo. This includes targeting containers that pose greater biosecurity risks or are from known high risk pathways such as Country Action List (CAL) countries, countries with seasonal or emerging pest risks or depending on the location of the final delivery address within Australia. The department additionally undertakes routine verification activities on arriving cargo as well as surveillance activities at and around wharf areas and empty container parks, to monitor for unwanted or emerging exotic insects and pests.” So this would just be a land-based inspection/treatment station. I’m sure this has happened before in Australia somewhere but I can’t quite recall where or when. I seem to recall when I was very young driving past an area where trucks had to stop & spray down their undercarriages. Not sure if it was related to the fruit fly zones where we’d have to ditch any fruit we were carrying. Must have been in NSW somewhere. Quote from: Arrival of goods in Australia awe dot gov dot au
We have at least two invasive ant species where I live in Southern CA., Argentine ants and fire ants. There are similarities to the yellow crazy ant invasion but the problems from our invasive ant species are much less. The Argentine ants can be pretty annoying in the kitchen, but there bite is barely noticeable. In the past they've made a big deal about the fire ants but I haven't noticed a big problem with them. One thing going for Southern CA with regard to our invasive ant species is that neither ant seems to like our dry climate and they are not common in our wild areas.
@@SusanKay- That was the Australian brown widow. They have become quite common here in the southeast US also. They can interbreed with the native black widow and their genetic characteristics are dominant. 😢🍻
This situation reminds me of something that was found in the US a few decades ago. The imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta) had been established for a long time, but in the small towon of Hurley in southern Mississippi was found a "supercolony" containing many laying queens, and researchers (some of whom I know as I am an entomologist) dubbed this spot "Queen City" and within a few years "Queen City 2" was discovered. Such supercolonies have tremendous reproductive capabilities and environmental impact.
I remember seeing giant balls of them floating down streams after alot of rain. It's pretty amazing how they can do that.
One thing that people can learn from ants is that there is strength in numbers. Ants are fearless but people are weak and not capable of combining forces to fight against Government oppression and economic slavery.
@@andrew_koala2974 Ants act purely out of instinct, what exactly is there to learn from that?
I lived in Texas for 30 years, fire ants are tiny little terrorists who have no mercy. They’re tiny but a bite from them leaves a blister that takes 6 weeks to heal. 🤬
@@frisco61 Yes, I've "endured" my share of their stings. I needed to collect them for research, and I'd put on gloves, and then use a trowel to make a hole in the middle of the mound. The ants came rushing out on all sides of the hole, and then fell inside to the bottom, so I could scoop them up to put into a container (along with some soil, of course). In some areas, the chiggers (AKA 'red bugs' in some areas) were worse than the fire ants because of the week's worth of itching they caused.
Borax, sugar & warm water applied to a cotton swab works wonders. Though, we may need the entire worlds current supply of borax to knock out this job!
Didn't get a lot of closure from that video... Kind of left me hanging a bit
Permethrin(synthetic pyrethrum) seems to be the only way to stop them in and around homes. Baiting could be difficult with so many queens. I wonder what other options there are. Permethrin is highly toxic to honeybees, fish, and aquatic invertebrates due to disruption of sodium channels.1,3,5 In general, mammals are less susceptible to permethrin compared to insects because their sodium channels are less sensitive to pyrethroids and recover more rapidly.
yeast and sugar.
Actually the non-synthetic insecticide from chrysanthemums from which permethrin is derrived might be a good idea for a sterilization/ re-introuduction of native species scheme. It breaks down rapidly which is good to allow rapid restoration and greater protection of non-invasive insect varieties.
Cheap white vinegar works instantly. Spray it on them and pour it directly in the nest.
@@emilyfloyd6939 That maybe a short-term fix, but with hundreds of billions of ants, you would cause damage from the deluge of vinegar. That there are so many queens is very odd and exacerbates controlling their birth rate. We need to solve it and not make things worse.
Borax mixed with sugar/honey.
This Video is crazy. Dealing with the climate in Canada can be depressing sometimes. But one positive is that were don't get much for invasive species. Not much is equipped to survive the winter.
you sir, are completely wrong. You get invasive species from China, as well as the Middle East.
That was my question. Does this species venture much outside the tropics? I tend to think no.
I bought one bottle of Ant Rid to use on some crazy ants in our kitchen and it worked so well I bought ten more bottles, putting a dozen drops in plastic bottle caps out near the nests outside. three weeks later, no more crazy ants at my place.
We need action to distory the nests.
What about the super nest that's almost 2,000 acres? That would take a nuke, and even then some would survive.
We had huge problems with ants around/entering our home. My friend recommended David Gray's Ant Termite Spray from Bunnings. It's reasonably priced concentrate mixed with water in an atomizer. Well that stopped them, so far so good, fingers crossed. Before that we going through ton insects spray.
I find the ant spats last 1-2 months, they are digging out sand from all our paving now getting cracks and sinking
It seems like the only cure here is to do what Australians do best, introduce foreign Predator species to eat these ants and find out that they like eating something else instead and create a whole new even worse problem.
Radio frequencies
Just look on the bright side, less cane toads.
Add a breeding ground for Echidnas ?
@@Rusty_Gold85 nah, go straight for the anteaters and create a territory war
When i saw the title, i was like, damn! there is always something invading Australia! lol.
The guy who made a comment down below me has the right idea. You guys shouldn't overcomplicate this. When I was growing up they had a special on PBS. Public broadcasting system. One Farm instead of using pesticides filled a crop duster with mixture of something like 90% water and 10% mineral oil with an aerator to mix it. This did the trick nicely. The older formula of the bug spray raid used to use this trick. They added a little oil to the pesticides in the can. It kills bugs a lot quicker than it does today. The only problem was it was somewhat staining. I think that's why they changed the formula I can't imagine otherwise. The stuff still works good, but not as good as before. When tackling this problem, you guys shouldn't turn an anthill mountain. You know until you guys figure out what you want to do, you could just go around with two gallon sprayers or something filled with mostly water and try maybe 5% mineral. Shake It Up and spray! The best part is it won't damage the environment.
I wonder if the industry is Rife with crime... allowing for the spread of more and more pests requiring more and more companies to `try` and eradicate them. I get my skepticism from the US., here where many good things have been wiped out by bigger companies that don't want the competition. I live in a single-family house in Maryland. We always had a little ant problem with tiny ants being seen at my kitchen windows and counters. So I had a service spray the outside of the house Foundation four times a year and rarely have to do anything inside. One day I realized that they had upped my automatic Bank charges so much that I was terribly annoyed and I fired them. Guess what? Within a few months I noticed almost no ant issues and it's been about 3 years now and I have no ant issues. WTF!
The problem with invasive species is once they have a foothold in their new environment they are impossible to eradicate.
Bring in the ant eaters
"once they have a foothold in their new environment they are impossible to eradicate.". Not always impossible.
Yellow crazy ants are natives in my place and they will be at war with weaver ants all day and sadly no other ant species can stop yellow crazy ants they are fast agile and are quite intelligent
Please do a follow up story. I want to know if we are successful in dealing with this serious problem. Thank you
Unchecked growth yields disaster in every simulation and real world records. That goes for humans too. Resources aren't unlimited and need time to replenish. It's a problem that solves itself unfortunately.
Thanos was right
They sound like humans
Ant: we have a huge problem... humans
Some guy likes to pour molten aluminum in fire ant nests and sell the casts. Maybe you could get a few guys doing this to wipe out the ant and sell the moulds to cover the cost
Australia has so many ants, they have uncles too!
I know it isn't a resolution to the issue, but is Australia's own ant eater, the echidna, a potential predator to these ants? Or is the acid problematic for the echidna?
thats like trying to putting out an oil well fire by pissing on it, yes piss will technically put out fire but that doesn't mean it will put out that fire
@@ydnark83 you're not drinking enough beer, Sally
Yes they have two of them but they can eat only so much. 😂
That was my first thought. Where are the anteaters?
Apparently they do enjoy a crazy ant snack. I’m guessing there aren’t enough of them eating a large enough volume of the ants to make a dent in the population though. But I’d be all in favour of every home having an echidna in the garden. They’re adorable little creatures.
You know you already lost when experts actually think they might be able to can "get them out for good".
The Australian ants remind me of the Australian police
Couldn't genetic engineering, where say a gene is introduced that sterilizes the ants if two ants carrying the gene mate and produce sterile eggs be introduced? This has had some success with mosquitoes and a lot of success with tsetse flies
it can be done a company called oxitec is doing just this to invasive mosquitoes spreading dengue....but environmentalists are against it...there you have your answer...
I had an issue with something like this but my research said it was a different ant, but I was only looking for Australian ant species. The ones I had seamed bigger though.
If you still have the problem capture a few & take them to your local Parks & Wildlife or Dept of Agriculture office & see if they can ID them for you. I’m sure they’d be pleased to know if they’re in your area. Well not pleased as such but you know what I mean
@@allisonjames2923 Dead and gone the ones I found.. I nuked them with poison lol Dunno, I found them living in my shed and a tarp (Which doesn't seam to fit the nest profile for crazy ants) that had came back from a camping trip. Just never seen the type of ant before, and they went crazy when I disturbed them. Lucky I had an excess of insect , surface spray and barrier spray at the time so I drown them until movement was 0.. I doubt any escaped. > But what had already got into the wild I have no idea. I found an identification that seamed similar and appeared to fit the profile of the ants (But that was from AU ants list) It's not like you would think to look for ant species from overseas. that was 5 or 6 years back. > Reporting them to Parks & Wildlife etc. I found a hive of Asian bees and reported it but no one came.. I just seen now that they gave up trying to get rid of them.
@@axle.australian.patriot lol. Well drowning them in spray will definitely do it if they don’t have underground nests. I remember drowning a really weird looking medium sized spider in spray. I initially just sprayed her normally, then she bucked off the hundreds of babies she’d been carrying on her back & they fled in every direction in my flat 😳 Not sure if they all died from the spray or being drowned that day, but all the baby wolf spiders & their Mummy died 😢 Even if they don’t do anything, it does help the Dept of Wildlife keep track of where they’re spreading I guess 🤷♀️ I haven’t heard of Asian bees. Last Hymenoptera baddie I heard of were European wasps when I was young. And I’ve still never seen any of those.
@@allisonjames2923 I think Asian Bee is a common name or something.. They are similar to the European bee, but less furry. Build nests that look a bit like a mud nest, or damage on a tree as if a limb broke off and created a football sized brown scab. They carry the mite that kills the Eu honey bee and compete (aggressively) against our native bee populations. > But those brown orange looking ants I have never really worked out. About the size of a green ant and even similar in shape, but a light yellow/orange to light brown colour. And run crazy everywhere when I disturbed them. I found some living in a speaker of the old stereo I keep in the shed, and another nest in a tarp I had used for a camping trip many months before..
@@allisonjames2923 P.S. Wolf spiders and I have a bad history. I have lost count of how many times I have had them wrap around my ankles and lay their teeth into me.
Watching so many people BAREFOOT in AUSTRALIA makes me think Australians simply do not feel fear as part of their genetics.
Australians should be scared. For the most part this country is going down under a giant flood.
Living here in Western Australia makes me think Australians are full of fear complying with mask and jab mandates. TV induced mass-hypnosis / fear /lies / lies / lies.
Never seen that kind of ants where I’m from in SE Asia
WA Perth is having the same issue with Argentine ant supercolony spreading and wiping out native ant species and insects
We got super colonies of Pharaoh ants in Northam. Been increasing for the last 3-4 years and now out of control. They would usually disappear when it got cold and wet but this year they are still everywhere. No matter where I feed my cat they are all over it in minutes...
@@gecko-sb1kp they might be the same ones as here, I couldnt tell if they were argentine or pharoah as they look similar
@@benk1844 Very tiny and light brown in color. A friend of mine had pest control at his house over another matter about 3 years ago and he asked him about it. The pest control guy said 'don't worry the colony will die out.' In other words, they have no idea how to control them...
Some of my best friends are Australians, but no amount of money could get me to live there. With most of the venomous species in the world on land and in the sea available in Australia, it makes life just a bit less secure even with pals around
No bears though. I’d poo myself if I saw a bear. They are so vicious
Depends on where you live. I have only seen a king brown snake in the wild 3 times in suburbia, and we have pest control for everything else. Unless you live in the country or far out west or north, it’s really not as bad as it seems. I saw more rattle snakes in the US wild than I have snakes here. I think because there is so much land that no one lives in that they don’t need to be all over us. Once we encroach further than it may be a bigger issue.
it aint for everyone,but i would say it's less dangerous than africa or india,the snakes we do have are generally less aggressive than a cobra or mamba with the only exception being tiger snakes and taipans
@@andrewsmart2949 I am not talking just about snakes, but all other forms of venomous creatures. It's definitely more dangerous in Africa since the image of living in the grassland comes to mind (hospital anyone?) Or indian's hospital which may not be as equipped and the traffic jams to get to one..but then again amongst the three countries Australia definitely is a heaven compared to the other two. But much safer countries are available, without the dangerous creatures, or in this video context, more controllable pests
@@smileyface5908 I...will...I am not sure what I will do..as I recall some species you gotta play dead, some you gotta outmaneuver it. But ya, that's a foe I rather not face compared to say a wolf which with a stone or edge weapon might come out with a pyrrhic victory but a bear. 99.999% a fight will be a loss.
You can put on the ants some crazy ant mites
Wait till they start jamming relays in AC units lol
It seems to me that ants are vulnerable to many things that direct action would prove effective. Benign chemicals in large concentrations are often toxic. Water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, alcohol. I can't say I trust Australia or the UK to deliver a predator or disease solution that won't cartwheel out of control. I wouldn't imagine the military would be effective either... Are there studies or reports on flood areas and the impact it's had on area invasives?
Co2 has been used but the problem is how large the area to treat is. Any dead ants become food for the survivors all the queens in an area have to die together or there is no control. Oxygen sounds fun but remember large area the amount of pure o2 would put the applicator in danger one spark might as well be hit by an artillery shell. Were talking enough o2 to displace all other gasses several meters deep over an acre. Water does not really do anything the ants are used to flooding and have systems to deal with it.
This article leaves us short of possible solutions. At the moment we are looking at "bad lands" where people and creatures won't live anymore. Usually nature solves problems in her own time. Sometimes a very very long time is needed to produce a workable balanced environment. We can see desertification in places that "lost" the battle. It should become a priority to research a genetically engineered solution.
Until then mix poison with sugar water, leave it near the nest and they'll carry it to their queens. Repeat until no more ants.
@@hurrdurrmurrgurr Thank you ! I don't have fire ants yet. I hope I never see them.
First we had Africanized Bees, now there are Africanized Ants?
introduce a aardvark
Boric acid + sugar water mixture, spray it out of a plane. Dead ants everywhere.
Awesome, you've solved it. I'm sure that does nothing to any other insect populations or flora, because you've researched that already.
Not a great solution. If you kill ALL the ants what do you think will happen to our native ant-eaters? Say for example echidnas.
@@fredsmith-kingofthelunatic7810 ...so you're saying let the crazy ants continue destroying all other native species because they're good for one native species? There are no "great" solutions or they would have been implemented already, obviously. Only the best solutions we can come up with given the situation.
@@Patangy that's not what I said at all. I used the echidna as an example. An example is a smaller group that represents a larger one. The echidna is one of many birds, insects, and animals that feed on ants. I pointed out the flaw in your plan to indiscriminately kill ants. I didn't suggest we do nothing to tackle the problem.
Ants are my least favourite insect. Flys might be gross but ants just get everywhere. Most grassy places are no go zones because of them.
The plural of Fly is Flies NOT Flys Undertake an extensive reading program to educate yourself and learn English as you are illiterate and poorly educated.
"Incredible invaders" bit ironic LMAO!!!
I have ants in California, in my cactus!! They laid eggs all over the leaves, and suffocated it. I sprayed with neem oil mixture, they died, and my plant grew back. I have to move my cactus all the time so ants won't find it again... I FRIGGIN HATE ANTS!!
David Grays spray from Bunnings
Does it actually work?
These ants remind me of our politicians and the bureaucraps. Yellow, mean, nasty, acidic, leaving behind massive trails of social destruction, physical destruction and interfering in every aspect of your life.
Oh yeah, the toxic conspiracy expert.. How about you stood up and participated in politics, instead of burdening others with your immature hate? Democracy is still the least worse solution, for running our societies! Perhaps megalomaniac Putins glorious dictatorship would please your simple mind?
Is there ANYTHING not a problem in Australia? As a resident I can't think of any!
A Russian invasion to rid you of phantom Nazis.
Australia: "The wildlife here isn't violent enough; let's import ants that shoot acid!"
Ants are intelligent. It seems using hot water may be more effective than chemicals. The water can penetrate into their nests and after a while they decide the environment is hostile and my move away. For Aussie homes, I am wondering if digging a shallow moat, lined with Eco-bricks and flooding with water will also deter them from invading the compound. Eco-bricks are empty PET drink bottles filled with sand, earth or waste plastic.Just cement them together. One may have to solve the parking problem for the family car.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Someone else here, from the Philipines said they used boiling water a lot. And it was working.
@@montinaladine3264 I use hot water against the fierce Kerengga ants in Singapore and they run very fast once i splash the water. I also study their nest system and has succeeded. However, it needs constant monitoring as they send scout ants out to check out the territory. There are many species of ants...most are friendly and are of help in the gardens. They run fast, do not bite and there friends. Those that bite are the ones I will exterminate and I do that by find out where their nests are. Make the territory hostile and they move to less less hostile places.
One would need copious amounts of 'Boiling hot water' It requires a large volume of water as the soil will absorb much of the water until saturation point is reached. In addition the soil cools the water - So copious amounts of hot water must be prepared beforehand - and saturate the ant affected area quickly to permit as much hot water to penetrate deep into the ground and surrounding area _ I would also suggest covering the affected area and surrounds with LIME
@@andrew_koala2974 Lime would be as environmental destructive as ants, surely?
Here's the solution. Why don't you all return to your motherland jolly ole England in Europe and return the land to Native Asian-pacific people. Problem solved!
An empty unwashed plastic coke bottle with a few holes and some well cooked rice inside, could be a very good ant trap, and it is so easy to setup, why not have a try to see if it works well with yellow crazy ants?
Drowning them with boiling water will work best
The method that you describe would only destroy the 'worker ants' It does not destroy the Queen(s) that will continue to reproduce. Your method is about as effective as attempting to hold back the tide. The entire breeding colony has to be destroyed to have any effect.
Umm.. did you understand the hectare size of the colonies?
2:57 That background music is🔥💯
Rats,Rabbits,Cayotes and now ants😂😂Hello Australia
09:15 This 'silent forest' phenomenon also reminds me of the white man's colonisation of New Zealand. Their introduction of pet cats, ferrets/weasels, rats and other European predators, previously unknown to NZ and therefore without natural local species to control them, led to their own eery ‘silent forests’ as those predators first ate the eggs of birds that nested on the ground and then up in the trees etc. Is it not interesting that a tiny ant can force humans to react when their own children and homes are under threat? Not just forest species but how many of those humans will be forced to move and leave behind a property that becomes, in effect, economically ‘valueless’ because no-one wants to move into such an infested house nor into that entire local area as it becomes known for this ‘growing invasion’. Humans have suppressed natural vegetation wherever they go whether for cosmetic purposes around where they have settled or for devastating agri-business and farming practices. If the ants force humans to move from the area will this area become ‘fallow’ and thereby allow for the replenishment of the local Life-support vegetation? Perhaps they ought to seek the advice of Aboriginal peoples who know this land inside out? Perhaps consider books like Bruce Pascoe’s *Dark Emu* and Robert Lawlor’s *Voices of the First Day* which go into some detail about Aboriginal knowledge and previous (yes!) *_farming_** practices.* They may not have had to deal with external ‘invasive’ species(?) but they will have had to deal with ‘pest species’ of their own. Aboriginal people are also well known - as are Inuit/Aleut (‘eskimo’) and other Native peoples - for being exceptionally creative when working within their Life-support environments (when left alone to do so). Their understanding comes directly from nature itself and not from the narrow, specialised, and ‘invasive authority’ of human beings from Europe. It’s just a thought….
are there still tribes living the ancient way in australia? i kind of doubt it, there are those who try to preserve some of the culture but that's mostly language, rituals and music and such, i might be wrong, i hope i am..
😁👍
@@runs_through_the_forest Try reading my f-ing post before you start dribbling over your qwerty-board, why doncha. No-one said there were, you mindless fool. The fact that a significant number of Aboriginal people are fervently keeping their traditions alive - and, yes, _passing them on_ - is not the same thing as "still...living the ancient way". Why are you advertising your blazing stupidity here on a public platform for all to see? Can't you get your attention fix by making an intelligent comment instead? Better still go read the sources I mentioned or find your own. There's plenty of Anthropology around this subject. And then learn to make a thoroughly *considered* comment. Did you not know that *there's a difference between thought-LESS-ness and thought-FULL-ness? Now take a wild guess at which one **_you_** are.*
When I lived in west Africa I had a huge grass harvesting ants nest in my driveway. I tried everything possible to wipe it out. My Gard went to the market and bought a matchbox sized box of white powder and sprinkled a very small dusting of it at the main hole. The ants disappeared overnight. Not even a body. It was DDT. What can I say!,
Ah. If only it didn’t have such terrible effects like causing cancer & harming the environment & humans in other ways 🥴 A nuclear bomb would probably be pretty effective at eliminating yellow crazy ants too, but we might regret trying that one 🤔
@@allisonjames2923 Use Diatomaceous earth FFS. It won't cause cancer and is safe for vertebrates.
@@allisonjames2923 Yeah "Silent Spring" was all made up BS. DDT was not as bad as we were told. We had mosquito populations under control in the third world, not anymore. It's been estimated that 50 million people have died of mosquito borne illnesses in third world countries since they were forced to abandon DDT.
@@allisonjames2923 I though that the big DDT scare was later debunked, no?
@@allisonjames2923 On that small of a scale, that's really not a problem....He didn't say spray the hell outa your crops...I think we've gone from one extreme to another needlessly. You remember asbestos and that scare? yeah right? how bout Y2K? And don't forget lead in paint...Well, now paint last one, maybe two good years without the lead. And, it takes a truckload of lead paint to be indgested to do any harm.. DDT in small doses would be fine...Like under that rock that dude pried up....I don't see any problems at all....
I've stepped into quite a few fire ant piles on the way to the local pool in Florida quite a few times. (Don't ever step into one. Not even for half a second!)
"Looking-glass upon the wall, Who is the scariest of us all?"
Australia seems to be in lot many animal problems then Africa rodents problems ants 🐜 problems snakes problems dogs 🐕 problems cats problems this nation's administration hopelessly as in some kind a deep inertia..
In America it's the same thing, but instead of an infestation of ants, we have an infestation of crimigrants from Mexico, and they have the same effect on the landscape and society as ants do in Australia. Let's hope by killing the nests we can delete both problems.
@@willboudreau1187 build a wall beautiful wall and I take the commission( trump) you will have your name on brick of wall and fools paid millions Brandon laughed away to banks America going autocracy and this will not happen trump can bark and his thugs can intimidate barking dog will lose again so as Hitler and other dictators...its humanity tht wins its a universal law try it ...
@@willboudreau1187 Funny. Every mass shooting perpetrator that I have heard about in the US is a US citizen, not a Mexican. Yet another mass shooting of US citizens by a US citizen happens every 2nd or 3rd week. Every insurrectionist who attacked The Capitol was a US citizen, not one was a Mexican. It is US police, not Mexicans who keep shooting US citizens of colour by ' accident'. It is also US citizens, not Mexicans, who are attacking the right to bodily autonomy of fellow US citizens ( who happen to own a vag instead of a dk) You need to take that hurling great big plank out of your eye, it's making you really blind, mate.
Humans are to blame for this Humans responsibilty to solve it. No ifs or ants about it
Fascinating. So what is actually being done about them? Are there any possible solutions? Why are none mentioned?
yeast and sugar mixture will take care of many ant nests. hope that helps someone.
Oh yes, well done, you've found the answer when all the actual ecologists and scientists haven't been able to do that in their actual daily jobs. Yeast and sugar is nothing but food for ants, no idea why you believe that's the solution and the experts have somehow missed it.
So beer?
@@PinataOblongata make a killer concoction out of 1 part molasses; 1 part sugar; 1 part baker's yeast. Mix these together, the ants will love it. They will bring it inside the ant-hill and the yeast will expand in their gut, killing part of the colony.
@@FLOYDMSMC Not VB! I think even the ants would refuse.
@@PinataOblongata eat the yeast and sugar and yeast makes them explode
Have you Aussies tried another lockdown to flatten the ant curve? 🤣
In my old place I had a terrible ant problem. They got into my remotes,tried desperately to get into the fridge and freezer. Once I made a sandwich with wholemeal bread and no sign of an ant till I went to eat it. Quite a few ants came out of the bread. Another time I turned the iron on and ants started pouring out. I had a drink sitting next to the lounge while watching TV. About 10 mins later I went to have a drink and the glass was covered in ants and there was a trail on the carpet. They were just black ants. I get really tiny brown ants here in my new place. They are barely visible.
Where was this old place? I've never even heard of an ant problem THAT profound in Australia, but if I HAD to guess, I'd say that it sounds like something that could happen in Perth.
A suburb of Sydney.
@@aussiegirl654 Damn!!! I used to live in various Sydney suburbs (until moving with my parents to Brisbane when I was 14). While some places had an excess of cockroaches, I can't imagine seeing a place like the one you described. At least not in Sydney! I could see such a thing happening in Perth because of how HOT Perth gets in the summer and, well... My place doesn't have any special ant problems. However, in the heat of the Brisbane summers I frequently find trails of ants moving up and down my walls and I find my tissue boxes FULL of ants!!! For some unknown reason, ants seem to LOVE crawling over and maybe even eating tissues!!!! I have to find some bizarre and unique solutions to keeping ants OUT of my tissue boxes in the summer!!! Ps: What suburb of Sydney was it? I lived in places all over Sydney, from Blacktown, to Mt. Druitt, from Paramatta to Campbelltown (yes, ha ha, I know... My surname is Campbell and I used to live in Campbelltown)...
Parramatta area. I used sugar, borax and water mixture it worked. Just look online for recipe. Goodluck.
@@aussiegirl654 No way!!! I used to live in Paramatta!! From 1987, through to 1991!!! I lived on Church st for 2 years and on Early st (just off Church st) for another 2).
Just wait till their best friends the fire ants come and chill.
Before and after at 5:42, Not sure the after looks worse, Looks more alive. Not even and anteater? Just curious on that one.
how about anteaters??? what controls them in the areas they are suspected of coming from?
I wonder how YCAs respond to borax mixed into simple syrup or honey? I find it good to bait ants around the house when they start becoming a nuisance. Doesn't work with all ants though.
Buy more Borax - It is great for Turkish exports of Boron - A quarter of a Teaspoon of Borax in 2 Liters of water completely eliminated arthritis in my hand. Drank a glass full every day for a week - and now a glass full every two or three weeks- prevents recurrence. Borax makes the water alkaline - which also keeps body acids low - acidity results from eating Meat and spicy food / sauces
Maybe they should introduce some red fire ants to combat them😂🤣😂...oh wait there already here 🤣😂🤣.
Antz in ya Pantz, Sick 'em Rex!. ;)
Very informative thank you.