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back to article Endangered aphid-stroking ants don wee radio backpacks

Boffins are fitting 1,000 northern hairy wood ants with teeny-tiny backpacks to track them in their habitat. The University of York researchers will take their ants from the National Trust's Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire, which is a hotspot for the protected beasties containing over 1,000 nests and 50 million worker ants. …

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  1. archengel46
    Mushroom

    think of the children!!!

    "gently stroke them to harvest honeydew"

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    1. Ragarath
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      Re: think of the children!!!

      The ant's are, that's the point is it not?

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bit disappointing, really...

    I was hoping for an off-kilter perspective from Lewis, rather than simply proficient science reporting.

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    1. ArmanX
      Reply Icon

      Re: Bit disappointing, really...

      There was so much room for double entrendre, and yet the best we got was "creepy-crawlies"... I think he's losing his touch! Science is nice and all, but science without a rant or a combination of winking and nudging is just not good entertainment.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
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        Anonymous Coward

        Losing his touch?

        A bit of gender confusion too, as Brid-Aine is quite definitely a very attractive woman...

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Losing his touch?

          After your comment I hopefully clicked on 'Get more from this author' but all i got was links to more stories.

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    2. PhilipN Silver badge
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      Re: Bit disappointing, really...

      Replace "ant" with "Brit" wherever it appears, and you've got it.

      Dangerously close to reality.

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  3. Kwac
    Devil

    I hope

    I hope they're tiny radio backpacks don't go anywhere near those crap powerline network thingies.

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  4. Magani
    WTF?

    Receivers?

    "The boffins will "carefully catch" the wee bugs and stick a 1mm radio receiver on each one,"

    Shirley if one is trying to track these little critters, it might be better to attach a transmitter rather than a receiver?

    Wonder what station the boffins tuned the ANTenna to? Do they like listening to old Adam and the Ants singles perchance?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Boffin

      Re: Receivers?

      My thoughts exactly; surely a *transceiver* would be more appropriate, as you don't want it transmitting the whole time (that wee battery must have tight constraints).

      I'd imagine the device functions like an RFID tag; so some external field powers a resonant circuit that triggers the transmitter.

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  5. The last doughnut
    Go

    So they are livestock farmers?

    I knew that leaf-cutter ants cultivated mould on -suprisingly- leaf cuttings and ate the mould. I didn't know they did this! Superb.

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    1. Richard Altmann
      Reply Icon
      Go

      Re: So they are livestock farmers?

      Yes Sir,

      Most of the nesting kinds of ants are keeping herds of aphids.

      You can watch it in your garden,set you´re not using any agent orange stuff to keep the buggers away.

      Leave cutters don´t and safari ants don´t either,they´re just leaving scorched ground.

      Leave your desk, go out in the garden,have a smoke and have a look at how great nature is in this tiny things you use to mindlessly trample to death.

      Another astounding info: The biomass of ants is double the one of mankind on earth. Ants are the real rulers of the planet.

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      1. Thorne
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        Re: So they are livestock farmers?

        "Ants are the real rulers of the planet."

        They will be when the radios are upgraded to lasers

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  6. Yesnomaybe

    ENDANGERED wood ants????

    FFS, if you stand still for a few seconds up near my cabin, they crawl right up your legs. The bity, stingy little bastards. They are everywhere, and are pretty impossible to eradicate, even if you dig out the mounds and light fires inside, the area gets re-colonised next year. And yet, in the UK they are "endangered"???

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