Re: Ants

David Bloch (ebloch at alpha1.curtin.edu.au)
Wed, 11 Sep 1996 21:49:09 +0800

Rhonda, I remember that when i was doing my B.Sc. (biology) degree we had to
capture and identify some ants for an assignment. We used a little gadget
called a pooter. What it is is a little plastic or glass bottle which has a
well sealed lid. The lid of the bottle has two holes in it with a tubing
comming out from each hole. The first hole has a long bit of tubing
extending out of the lid, with about 1 centimetre of tubing protuding into
the bottle. The end of the tubing that protudes into the bottle has a small
bit of mesh or gauze on it (i will explain why later :-). The second hole
has a shorter bit of tubing that extends most of the way into the bottle and
has no gauze or mesh.

The idea of this gadget is to suck through the tube that has the gauze on
the end while pointing the other tube toward or near some ants. What
happens is as you suck through the one tube it cause s a vacuum in the
bottle and air is then sucked up through the other tube and hopefully sucks
up some ants! the idea for the gauze is so you dont get any ants in your mouth!

With a bit of practice you can get pretty proficiant at pootering up ants!!
Just be careful that you dont suck up agressive ants, they tend to squirt
out formic acid as a defence and the formic acid vapours are not very
plesent. hope this helps you!


David Bloch B.Sc. (BIOLOGY)
AQUATIC TECHNOLOGIES - Consultant, Design, Construction and
Maintenance of Aquaria, both fresh and seawater
ANGFA (WA) home page: http://student.curtin.edu.au/~ebloch/ANGFA.HTML
Email - ebloch at alpha1.curtin.edu.au
Snail Mail - 15 Ramsay Close Noranda, Perth Western Australia, 6062