6/5/2006: Ant world cup

It can't be. But in fact it is. Here you see the first World Cup played completely by ants. Japan versus Brazil.



According to the full story,

In the wild, the ants recognize enemies by their pheromones. The organizers of the game used this natural ability to make the ants "ant-agonize" each other, by feeding the Japanese team with Kagoshima pork and the Brazilian team with spare ribs in order to alter the ants' pheromones.

It says the match ended in a draw, which I feel is totally unacceptable. It doesn't say what the score was, either. Shoddy journalism.

they stole the 'ball' from a dung beetle.

No way Japan ties Brazil. Shenanigans!

Well that's because they used ringers, not actual ants from Brazil which would look more like this:



...and would probably win the cup without having to actually eat spare ribs, in fact it would probably eat the other team.

Brazilian ant image from this thread from the "Name That Ant" forum. I did not make that up.

OHHH! Fucking cheaters! the goddamn ant is using his hands in the second picture.

REF, ARE YOU FUCKING BLIND???

Ants got hands?

:lol:

No, see in ANT soccer, they can't use their feelers.

this is disturbing in more than one level

Highriskgeo wrote:

this is disturbing in more than one level

Someone had to take their time to paint little team logos on the ants. With a brush. While holding them still and without crushing them.

Think about that for awhile.

They probably just stuck them in a fridge for ten minutes.

If you think ant soccer teams is sick....what about the fans that sit and watch the games. :eyebrow:

xoxoxoBruce wrote:

If you think ant soccer teams is sick....what about the fans that sit and watch the games. :eyebrow:

Are you calling me sick?

LabRat wrote:

:lol:

No, see in ANT soccer, they can't use their feelers.

That sounds suspiciously new age to me, I'll ask my neighbor he's a soccer ref. The regular kind.

I'm assuming that ant soccer hooligans are what...aardvarks?

footfootfoot wrote:

Are you calling me sick?

Would I?
Could I?
Should I? :tinfoil:

There's this cooking show on the radio, which I dislike, and one of the segments that annoys me most is where the caller rings up the host and tells them the pathetic contents of their refrigerator and pantRy and challenges the host to make a palatable dish from the short and comically mismatched list of ingredients. Just get in the car and go buy some freakin groceries, 'k?

Anyway that's what this story reminds me of. A couple of bored students in the school biosciences lab with too much time and too little...guidance. "I'm bored. I don't *want* to work on our term project. There's nothing to do. What can we do? We got ants, and some nail polish, wait, here's a chunk of poo on my boot. :lightbulb: ..." you get the idea. :rolleyes:




edit: corrected funny/embarassing/misleading typo. Thank you LabRat. You may read the original post by subtracting the obvious edit.

BigV's post has the authoritative ring of the voice of experience...

;)

BigV wrote:

tells them the pathetic contents of their refrigerator and panty and

panty?

I thought Howard Stern went to pay radio?

Those slackers ought to get back to what the rest of the world needs and expects - fielding an all robot World Cup soccer team.

FYI: This was just Boing Boinged.

Yar! Prepare to be boarded.

Thankfully they linked to the blog view version, which uses less resources, so the server will survive.

Sadly they linked to the "general" IotD, not the permalink version, which means that if I post a new IotD today, that will be what Boing Boingers get, not the Ant W. C.

I will hold off posting a new IotD until later, for the sake of the Boingers. Welcome Boingers!

Undertoad wrote:

I will hold off posting a new IotD until later, for the sake of the Boingers.

Just e-mail 'em. They're usually really good about updating stuff very quickly.

I think instead you should flush the backlog to IotD, give 'em something different every 5 minutes :)

PS: How should links to the IotD be done? This one for example.

I've emailed em and they have fixed it. (Thanks again Mark!)

The best way for high traffic site to link to an IotD is to link to the "permalink" of the blog view version, which is found in the upper right hand corner of the blog view version. The box where it says "Permalink Latest Image" is the "permanent" link to that particular daily image.

Hooray

I wonder how long it took them to tie their boots

Undertoad wrote:

The best way for high traffic site to link to an IotD is to link to the "permalink" of the blog view version, which is found in the upper right hand corner of the blog view version. The box where it says "Permalink Latest Image" is the "permanent" link to that particular daily image.

Thanks. Now I just have to try and remember there is a special way to link.

Just wait until FIFA get's to know how much the ants get payed. LOL!

They look like they've been Photoshopped for a WORTH 1000 Competition, done something similar myself.

this is all just another example of humans being completely bored with where they stand in the world and how evolution is working to slow for us

Was the refere an ant?

This might be their cheerleader.....

http://www.sillyanimals.com/funpages/all/danceant.html