So, I've been thinking about getting into ant keeping. Anyone have any idea when Nuptial Flights happen in Israel? I imagine no, but better to ask!

Ants are intensely interesting to me and have only grown more-so as I've studied ant keeping and ants in general. A lot of what I thought I knew has turned out to be exceedingly basic and narrow in focus.

I'll keep you guys up to date once I get things rolling.

@Surasanji I was just talking to @mngrif about wanting to get into ant keeping myself!

@freemo @mngrif I've been watching hours and hours of Ant keeping videos on YouTube, and joined an Ant Keeping discord server.

It's a very supportive and kind community of enthusiasts.

@Surasanji @freemo @mngrif I keep bees... I am not sure what one gets from keeping ants though. Or is it just voyeuristic?

@Absinthe

You harvest the ant-poop and make pie out of it. Its delicious :)

Plus lets not forget the army of millions venomous soldiers ready to do your bidding!

@Surasanji @mngrif

@freemo @Surasanji @mngrif Okay, our ideas of delicious may not coincide.

There was a petstore that had those "Arrow" frogs. The kind that are supposed to be poisonous (and venomous too, yes I know the diff :) )

I asked the guy why these were safe for pets. He said they develop their poison from their diet of fire ants. And since you wouldn't provide that they were perfectly safe.

He went on to add, that there was someone who setup a huge indoor environment containing many of these and the requisite ant colonies. There was some strange accident where he slipped and fell into a group of these frogs and was dead before he could right himself.

Sorry, that was very tangential. Ooh, math, tangents. :)

@freemo @Absinthe @mngrif We can always get Escamoles.

And yeah, fire ants (Solonopsis) are pretty nasty, particularly the south american sorts.

@Surasanji @freemo @mngrif I am not sure I care about their nationality, I just know they are mean and have a good reason for their name. Ouch.

@Absinthe @freemo @mngrif The most venomous insect in the world is an Ant. The Maricopa Harvester Ant (Pogonomyrmex maricopa) in the western US. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogonomy

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@Surasanji @freemo @mngrif Hmmm, well as long as they stay out west that'll be fine with me. We do, however, have these kcuffers here:

insectidentification.org/insec

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