Bold, biting, venom injecting, habitat invasive and just plain annoying, ants come in hundreds of varieties and are on the march across the United States. Fire ants are the worst. Their bite stings and massive numbers swarming over a young child playing in the backyard can cause death.

Fire ants, originally concentrated in the southern United States, are moving north possibly because of global warming. Fire ants are now found in the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Mexico and other areas never inhabited until now.

Major efforts are underway to stop them. Texas farmers, for example, say Fire ants build huge porous dirt mounds up to five feet deep and two feet high in pastures and fields posing a threat to wandering livestock. Some enterprising Texas farmers have attacked Fire ants with mobile homemade cone shaped microwave contraptions that sit on top of an ant mound and cook the inhabitants inside until they perish.

The process, however, is time consuming and the ants spread faster than the farmers can keep up with them. This leads us to research by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) at toxic waste dumps in Idaho where ants burrow as much as 20-feet deep in the ground, carrying buried waste to the surface.

Dr. Douglas Halford, head of the Environmental Surveillance Program (ESER), which assesses, among other things, radio-ecological issues involving toxic waste sites and the possibility of ant-spread contaminants.

Asked what effect radioactive materials have on the ants themselves, Dr. Halford says only extremely high doses of radiation affects ants. Ants, he says, are like cockroaches and other invertebrates, which are almost immune to radiation.

While ants may be capable of unearthing toxic waste, their soil moving habits are also important components of our natural ecosystem. They aerate the soil, spread seeds, release moisture and prey on other, less desirable insects.

The ants themselves are a food source for many animals including birds, bears and fish. Poisonous frogs, it is said, may develop their toxin from feeding on fire ants. Of concern is whether toxic-waste carrying ants can spread such toxins up the food chain to man.

There are 12,000 kinds of ants in the world and their combined weight is higher then the combined weight of all people on the earth. The size of an ant’s brain is bigger than any other insect brain and certain parts of the ant brain functions like the grey matter of human brains. In fact, an ant’s brain may have the same processing power as a late model Macintosh computer.

So, how do you control ants? The Chinese figured it out 2,000 years ago. China has more ants than any other place on earth. The Chinese use a nontoxic powder made from crushed petrified one-celled animals called diatoms that grew in lakes millions of years ago. This powder cuts and dehydrates ants that walk across it and they carry it into their burrows.

Because the powder is a mechanical control, ants don’t become immune to it as they do to chemical pesticides. Commonly known as diatomaceous earth, this powder is produced in the United States and sold in garden shops and hardware stores under a variety of brand names including AntEater Kitchen Bug Powder, Insect dust, and D.E.

Select one that carries the Organic Material Review Institute (OMRI) label. Products that display the OMRI Seal contain no toxic ingredients or petro-chemical insecticides. Another consumer product awareness seal, called “Pet Approved,” means the product is safe for dogs, cats and other pets.

For more information visit www.milkyspore.com or for a free brochure call (800) 801-0061.

Courtesy of ARAconten

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