Subject: are ants bad for our health?
From:
Date: Sun, February 28, 2010 2:00 am
To: bugman@bugs.org
We have ants and I respect their quest for food...but does their
presence in our home have any health consequences foe us?
Thanks,
Bruce
Hi Bruce,
Thank you for bringing your BUG-Question to P.R. Mantis and the BUG-People! We love to help people understand, respect and even appreciate the incredible world of BUGS every chance we get!
Well put question! It isn't always easy to figure out where their rights stop and ours start. Respect is a tricky thing sometimes! But I think you are asking exactly the right question. You make a more respectful decision the better you understand the situation!
The short answer is that there probably isn't any health concern to you or your family or pets. The key to any effective 'pest management' issue is an accurate identification. Most ants represent a nuisance at worst and something interesting to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon at best! There is one qualification I can add to that: if they are nesting somewhere in the structure of your home, it could lead to some structural problems like rotted or eaten wood or fungal growths on their 'trash pile.'
Otherwise, if they are not biting ants (usually red, suggesting danger), and are simply sharing your food, they are probably nothing but a bother. The way you know if they're biting ants, is if someone gets bitten by one. It will hurt, watch for bad reactions, like difficulty breathing, and you'll know the ants bite. That will change the way you need to get rid of them - you'd want to be more aggressive. If these guys are 'dangerous' like that, write back, and we can give you some ideas of faster methods!
I think it is possible to 'modify their quest for food' so that it doesn't journey through your pantry and doesn't disrespect the ants either.
Most insects choose to live where the livin' is easy... in other words where there is a lot of low-risk, low-hassle food. For them to go away, your house only has to be a little more challenging than the next available food source. (It's like the way to get away from an attacking bear, you don't have to run faster than the bear - only faster than the person you're hiking with!)
So, your house must smell like some great cooking! They must love it! You can make it smell less like food, and destroy their 'pathways,' which are invisible (to us) trails they make out of chemicals called pheromones (see the opening scene in Pixar's A Bug's Life, for an outstanding example of this - and check out the activity we have developed to explore this phenomenon also - you may be able collect some cool data before you take care of your problem! We'd love to hear your results if you do it!)
(these are the links in case you have to copy and paste)
http://www.pixar.com/featurefilms/abl/
http://bugs.org/dream/ants/ant_parade.html
You can't get all potential ant food out of your house. Even if your house is Martha Stewart clean, there will be plenty for ants to eat. And spraying insecticides is not effective most times because, hey, spray all you want...they'll make more! All you can really do is try to make your house not smell like food as much as possible. For some reason (and this is not an endorsement or anything negative about other similar products) Formula 409 seems to work very well in this regard. It is probably true that other cleaning agents also will do the job, but this is the only one tested in the official BUGMAN Labs (Mark's apartment!) While this compound and other cleaning agents have some toxic qualities - bleach is a potent toxin - they are formulated to be cleaners not killers.
This incredible Image is a Scanning Electron Micrograph (SEM) of an ant's face! This particular ant, Quadristruma emmae (really, that's its name!), has very little eyes and all sorts of weird sensory structures all over its face. you could be walking right next to one of these and experience a completely different sensory world!.So to get rid of ants, you need to accomplish two goals: make your place not smell like food, and remove their pheromone trails so they won't just find it anyway by following old pathways. I think Formula 409 (and probably other cleaners) will do both of those things. And the ants make it easy. Just figure out where they are going to - and where they are coming from and use some cleaning stuff to change all the smells! That should convince them to go to the next easiest place, since yours has become undesirable!
Easy!
But, maybe you can get some nice photos or videos to share with us first! Find us on Facebook if you do that stuff!
Hope that help!
And thanks again for Askin' BUGMAN and P.R.!!
Mark
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