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Thread: Who can guess what this is?
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05-05-2007 #11
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Originally Posted by TheOne1
I can`t wait to see ants strike back, pouring plaster in his house and wait
to get hard...
"...My father was the wind, my mother was fire
Raised by the wolves - I grew up wild..."
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05-05-2007 #12
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- Dec 2004
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- Out there somewhere...
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Here comes the science bit...concentrate:
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The architecture of the subterranean nests of the Florida harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex badius, was studied through excavation and casting. Nests are composed of two basic units: descending shafts and horizontal chambers. Shafts form helices with diameters of 4 to 6 cm, and descend at an angle of about 15–20° near the surface, increasing to about 70° below about 50 cm in depth. Superficial chambers (< 15 cm deep) appear to be modified shafts with low angles of descent, and are distinct from deeper chambers. In larger nests, they have a looping, connected morphology. Chambers begin on the outside of the helix as horizontal-floored, circular indentations, becoming multi-lobed as they are enlarged. Chamber height is about 1 cm, and does not change with area. Chamber area is greatest in the upper reaches of the nest, and decreases with depth. Vertical spacing between chambers is least in the upper reaches and increases to a maximum at about 70 to 80% of the maximum depth of the nest. The distribution of chamber area is top-heavy, with about half the total area occurring in the top quarter of the nest. Each 10% depth increment of the nest contains 25 to 40% less area than the decile above it, no matter what the size of the nest.
Methods of study
North Florida is an ideal location for studying ant nest architecture because of its deep, homogeneously sandy soils. There are no stones, barriers or layers of varying resistance. The nests in this soil are strictly the result of the ants' intrinsic behavioral programs, unconstrained by variations in the medium.
The architecture of the nest void was rendered by two methods. In the first, a pit was dug next to the nest and the chambers were exposed horizontally, one at a time, starting from the top. The depth and orientation of each chamber were recorded, its contents collected for later counting and measuring, and its outlines traced on transparent acetate sheets. Using this method, detailed excavations were completed and complete census of 33 Florida harvester ant nests (Pogonomyrmex badius), ranging from 2 to 3.02 m deep and consisting of 5 to 150 chambers. This method produced a reasonable rendering of the two-dimensional outlines and spatial distribution of the horizontal chambers, and a complete record of the distribution of ants and seeds within the nest. It did not record the vertical shafts connecting chambers. Except for the details of nest architecture, the results of these excavations have been published (Tschinkel 1998; 1999a; b)
In the second method, the nest void was filled with a thin slurry of orthodontal plaster poured into the nest entrance (Williams and Lofgren 198. This produced a (usually) perfect three-dimensional rendering of the nest's voids. The hardened cast was excavated and then reassembled to produce the finished cast. For reassembly, chambers were supported with steel rods driven into holes in a backboard. Because the shafts of P. badius are large in diameter, the thin slurry often completely filled a 3 m-deep nest in a single pour. The sandy soils of the Florida coastal plains allow the plaster slurry to displace the air within the chambers, filling them completely. Heavy clay soils often produce incomplete casts and voids within the plaster because of trapped air. Although a few images of the nest casts of several ant species have been published (Tschinkel 2003), the details of the nest architecture of P. badius are presented here for the first time.
Because reconstruction of a plaster cast often required considerable time, a method was developed for melting zinc or aluminum in a portable kiln fired with charcoal and provided with an air blast from a battery-powered automobile heater fan. As with plaster, the molten metal is poured into the nest entrance and flows until it freezes. Each metal has its advantages and limitations. Zinc is brittle, but because of its lower melting point, flows deeper into a nest, whereas aluminum makes extremely strong casts, but does not penetrate as deeply. For very deep nests, both metals require excavation of the cast followed by a second episode of pouring. Pouring red-hot aluminum in the bottom of a 2-meter pit runs the risk of having ones socks catch on fire from the radiant heat.
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?requ...F%5D2.0.CO%3B2
Navin R. Johnson: You mean I'm going to stay this color??
Mother: I'd love you if you were the color of a baboon's ass.
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05-05-2007 #13
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Amazing what a man can find on a TS site like this one....emagine, LG, somebody will search/type something about ants as a key on Google tomorrow and get this page as return info...
"...My father was the wind, my mother was fire
Raised by the wolves - I grew up wild..."
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05-05-2007 #14
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- Dec 2004
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- Out there somewhere...
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- 2,810
Balcanoid said:
Amazing what a man can find on a TS site like this one....emagine, LG, somebody will type something about ant as a key on Google tomorrow and get this page as return info...
You can't claim we don't have some serious discussions and some hardcore science on these forums.
And it does make a change from all the dick threads.
Navin R. Johnson: You mean I'm going to stay this color??
Mother: I'd love you if you were the color of a baboon's ass.
-
05-05-2007 #15
- Join Date
- Feb 2007
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- East Europe
- Posts
- 460
Your`re right about it, I must say you got quite
scientific approach to the matter and I like it...
keep up!
"...My father was the wind, my mother was fire
Raised by the wolves - I grew up wild..."
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05-07-2007 #16
Judging by the look on the guy's face, I'd say it's his artistic representation of his last ejaculation. And he seems damn proud of it.