I don’t find it ethical to incite animal wars but I’ve had this happen to me (accidentally).
Years ago, my parents bought me an ant farm and to my disappointment, we had to wait a whole WEEK for the ants to arrive in the mail.
I couldn’t wait that long so I just took a bunch of ants from outside and used those. They immediately started owning the place. Building tunnels and developing their little ant community.
Then came the new ants in the mail. I figured, what the hell, they’re all the same so I mixed them. Carnage ensued. It wasn’t a nice sight and since I was emotionally attached to them at this point, I shed quite a few tears.
Sim Ant was too easy. All you had to do was sneak over into the red ant nest and dig straight down. The red queen, because she likes being deep inside the nest, starts making her way downward. And, since there’s lots of tunnel space, the reds won’t do much additional digging. Then, just wait for rain. The red queen should drown at the first rainstorm.
For future reference: worker ants would rather run than fight, unless they’re hungry. You’ll have to give it a couple days.
It’s been six years. If it hasn’t happened by now you may as well give up. Bastards are both immortal and they’re not fighting because they know there would be no point.
My strategies were to go to the Red nest before the eggs started hatching and a) put down Red alarm scent all around their nest, so that they’d prowl around defending instead of foraging and all starve to death, or b) block off the Red nest with a bunch of rocks (has to be re-done periodically, but putting a rock inside the nest lasts longer than stopping it up at the surface).
It takes a bit longer than five minutes, but the trick is to maintain a balance between the red and black colonies on the first square and concentrate all your resources on breeding. As long as that first red colony stays alive, the game will not automatically generate a new one on another part of the yard; thus, the red ants can never get a good foothold. You may have to sacrifice your original colony, but you should have that square completely surrounded by black colonies before that happens.
Keep building up the colonies at the edge of your territory and use them to sew your wild oats as far away as possible. Once you’ve driven the humans out of the house, you can either use your preferred Quick Game strategy to defeat the remaining red ants, or let the AI take care of it.
So life is sacred. And you’d gladly suffer death by smallpox rather than deprive those little bugs of their sacred lives? Pity they don’t share your morality. Face it, death is death, and the reasons behind it don’t much matter in the larger scheme of things. But if there is Karma, I’m sure you can go to the Great Beyond feeling all warm and fuzzy about yourself, but the rest of us really just don’t care.
Cinnamon. It drives ants NUTS. It is a poison to them, it also cripples them, it destroys their scent trail, it’s a sort of all-in-one. Sprinkle it on or near some ants and watch. We use it as a natural ant repellent in our kitchen and near doors and windows. Works like a charm and it’s safe for kids and pets. I don’t know if they fight to the death, but they will fight sometimes if a “non-cinnamon-ed” ant comes up to a “cinnamon-ed ant” And as for karma, (seriously?) we have to keep the ants out somehow, we might as well have some fun. And chemicals would be worse for everyone, including the ants.
But it is not the op that is killing them. It is one ant killing the other. It is they that should learn not to kill each other for audience’s enjoyment.
These ants are behaving just like people, put two with different coloured skin in a room and meh. Get a whole gang of one of the colours and booom - all hell breaks loose.
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Here’s a technique I’ve had success with:
Wait till the ants look away from each other and then say, “Hey, ya queen’s seminal receptacle is in her mouth!” This works best if you use a little ant-like voice.
Roll your eyes over the POINT of the post, that it doesn’t matter WHY something dies, just that it does. Is there any special salvation for those ants because somebody killed them for enjoyment, as opposed to eternal oblivion when a car tire runs over them>
Not sure how repeating a line several times makes any point. Like somebody asking me something in a foreign language, and when I tell them I don’t speak their lingo, they repeat the same thing, only louder.
I am very sympathetic to animals and anti animal cruelty and I think this whole thread is hilarious. They’re just ants. I don’t like animal pit fighting either but they didn’t even fight!
