Crazy Ants: Infesting Texas and Beyond
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009Passport to Texas from Texas Parks and Wildlife
The Raspberry crazy ant has infested at least eleven counties in Texas, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping.
Crazy ants are tropical ants that need warm temperatures and high humidity. And so the conditions are favorable from Houston to Florida.
Mike Quinn is an invertebrate biologist. Colonies have multiple queens and ants number in the millions and possibly billions; they even drive out other ants. And if you want to hear something really crazy…
A&M has surveyed homeowners that had the fire ant and then had the crazy ant, and they almost all say they would rather have the fire ant back.
Having dealt with a fire an infestation inside my home, it’s hard to imagine anything worse.
Well, the fire ant can be controlled. But the difficulty with the crazy ant is that the only chemical that can control it is rather toxic. A lot of pesticides could be spread that harm the environment and not bring the crazy ant under control. Anybody who has this ant should contact a professional.
Although this rice grain sized, reddish colored ant is usually just annoying to humans, it can prove devastating to flora and fauna. We’ll discuss that tomorrow.
If you want to discuss this topic, we invite you to go to passporttotexas.org and leave a comment.
That’s our show…for Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Movie of Rasberry Crazy Ants on the Ground [need QuickTime]
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