68
votes
Accepted
Plausible reason for gold-digging ant
Why would ants unearth pieces of gold? What evolutionary purpose would
this behavior serve?
It makes their chimneys work better.
The workers gather the gold and bring it to the colony. The soldiers ...
- 26.9k
66
votes
Accepted
Wasp hives in a walking corpse. Why would wasps do this?
Because it's a viable ecological niche, of course. The wasps are an evolutionary development of the Ichneumonoid wasps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichneumonoidea which lay their eggs in living ...
- 20.5k
53
votes
Accepted
How to stop ants from learning philosophy and taking over Belarus
Ants are Already in Charge
Your question is based on the typical vertebrate naivety that humans are the dominant species on the plant. This is incorrect. Humans are not the dominant species. The ...
- 66.2k
50
votes
Could Wasps and Ants reach the stone age?
Stone Age Progression
This is all well and good , but their is one major flaw in choosing an insect hive mind - they can't lift 10 ounce stones apply the repeated , focused force necessary to ...
- 30.2k
45
votes
Accepted
How would giant, secluded, underground-cave-dwelling insects get enough food?
You need an energy source other than the sun. The main alternative is reduced sulfur that can be oxidized for energy. Organisms that can do that chemistry are chemotrophs and so far all are bacteria....
- 305k
44
votes
How to disguise insect meat?
Don't disguise it, just make it taste good to your audience
Crawfish, Lobster, and Crab are all very delicious and creepy looking "bugs" that tons of people have no issue eating with ...
- 101k
36
votes
Accepted
Why do I still want insect screens?
Protect against Ember Attack
This is the number one cause of house loss in Australian Bushfires - tiny smouldering bits of vegetation riding on the wind advancing up to 15km in front of a bushfire. ...
- 44.3k
32
votes
Plausible reason for gold-digging ant
They don't value the Gold - They expel it from their burrows
What use is a shiny metal to an ant? They don't make artefacts or have currency. They don't have an aesthetic sense apart from food.
The ...
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30
votes
Accepted
What material would ant-sized humans use to make armour?
Actually, your best bet will be portions of insect exoskeleton! When formed properly, it can offer its wearer a shell of protection. Sure, a sting might penetrate the armor plate, but if there is some ...
- 40.9k
26
votes
Could flying insects re-enter the Earth's atmosphere from space without burning up?
If by ‘from space’ you mean dropped from above the Karman line: then any. Humans have skydived ‘from space’.
If, however, you mean any other definition of ‘from space’ then... Erm.. None really.
The ...
- 66.4k
25
votes
How to disguise insect meat?
Sausage.
The Jungle is now remembered for how Sinclair advocated for worker's rights. But the most memorable parts for me were the parts describing how sausage was made.
THE JUNGLE -- Upton Sinclair
...
- 305k
22
votes
How can I maintain realism while having giant insects?
Yes, but not from radiation.
The Earth has witnessed plenty of giant, terrifying insects over its 4.6 billion years. During the Caboniferous period, well before the dinosaurs, there was slightly more ...
21
votes
Accepted
Parasitoid wasp targeting humans: which tissue would they target?
Humans, as with all primates, are remarkably adept at scratching, self-and-social grooming. Any parasite that can be attacked from the surface, will be.
A parasite needs to either dig deep enough so ...
- 26.3k
20
votes
How feasible would it be if cockroaches no bigger than an inch (2.5 centimetres) took fall damage from around 6-7 feet in the air or less?
Small creatures do not get damaged from falling because they quickly reach terminal velocity and thus do not hit that hard on the ground.
The only way to get away from this and get falling damage is ...
- 296k
18
votes
Plausible reason for gold-digging ant
Electrical conduction
Gold is a good conductor. Perhaps these ants use electrical pulses (rather than pheromones) to communicate in their nests. So they move the gold so that there are paths ...
- 25.3k
17
votes
Could Wasps and Ants reach the stone age?
Never underestimate the power of a hive mind. Their intellect could easily come up with solutions that we never did.
As for the issue of an ant not being able to lift 10 ounces, I'd like to point ...
- 133k
17
votes
How can I maintain realism while having giant insects?
Those Sizes Sound Manageable
The coconut crab can grow to about one metre.
Seems it has overcome the main limitations like heavy carapace and inefficient respiratory system. Whatever evolutionary ...
- 66.2k
16
votes
How feasible would it be if cockroaches no bigger than an inch (2.5 centimetres) took fall damage from around 6-7 feet in the air or less?
Not feasible
Even if you scale them up to the size of a mouse, terminal velocity is only about 15 m/s, which is generally survivable by all but the most fragile creatures, especially since the squared-...
- 29.1k
15
votes
Could Wasps and Ants reach the stone age?
You talk a lot about fire and stone tools but your question really is (emphasis mine):
They intend for these "Vespoids" to one day reach a similar level of advancement in less time than humanity so ...
- 2,490
15
votes
Accepted
A World Without Bugs
Bugs are replaceable but their roles must be preserved
You must have some species to do their jobs if they are not present.
These may include
Pollination. While plants may develop mechanisms that ...
- 20.6k
15
votes
Plausible reason for gold-digging ant
The ants are giant packrats!
The gold digging ants are not typical ants,
http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/the-monstrous-ant-of-the-medieval-bestiary/
There are also ants that, according to some ...
- 305k
15
votes
Could an insect cast in amber stay intact in space?
Ionizing radiations and energetic particles will surely cause a cumulative damage to the tissues of the mosquito, unless the amber has some serious thickness to act as a shield.
Don't forget that one ...
- 296k
15
votes
Could an insect cast in amber stay intact in space?
As other answers have pointed out, cosmic radiation will cause considerable damage to the DNA and organic tissues of the mosquito, even when the bug is encased in amber. If you want the aliens to ...
- 471
15
votes
How to stop ants from learning philosophy and taking over Belarus
Biological warfare.
This would be to incapacitate as much of the army as possible, possibly sowing confusion, panic and dissent where possible.
Cordyceps: Turn them into zombies.
There's a wonderful ...
- 26.9k
14
votes
Accepted
How to Counter Mosquito-Borne Diseases in a Premodern World
They can favor the presence of animals feeding on those mosquitoes at any stage of their development:
fishes can feed on the larvae while they are in the water
insects and spiders can pray on larvae ...
- 296k
14
votes
How to stop ants from learning philosophy and taking over Belarus
Hmmm, there are a lot of interesting things to unpack with this. Here are a few ideas that might work, depending on details of how exactly this ant intelligence would work:
Interrupt their ...
- 879
14
votes
A planet *without vertebrates. (*mostly, restrictions apply)
Just do Earth again
Out of all of the clades in the Earth, only 3, to my knowledge, possess internalized skeletons: Those being cephalopods, echinoderms, and chordates. And of these 3, only two (...
- 16.3k
13
votes
How would a military counter the use of genetically modified insects used to defeat CBRN protective gear?
These sort of cat and mouse games are hard to speak to on this kind of site. The answer is always the same "the military will identify a weakness in the attacker's attack, and exploit it."
I would ...
- 133k
13
votes
Why do I still want insect screens?
Non-insects.
I'm going to assume that this magic repellent can be sprayed all around the house so noise, dead insects etc. are not a problem. It genuinely keeps insects out. However...
Birds. Birds ...
- 22.4k
13
votes
How do you farm flies?
Oh, come on, mate! Just a simple "insect farming" in your favourite (& hopefully decent) search engine would have led you Wikipedia's insect farming/As feed and food - with the two very ...
- 11.6k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible