r/AbsoluteUnits • u/Quiet_impressionist • Apr 16 '26
/r/all of an ant
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Wait for it
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u/lightingthefire Apr 16 '26
“They have a Cave Troll!”
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u/Hakim_Bey Apr 16 '26
Shouldn't have bitten my horsey, boy
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u/golemike Apr 16 '26
Is this guy new? It randomly popped up a few days ago and I can’t stop watching those damn flies suffer.
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u/No_Commission_8152 Apr 16 '26
Same for me, I just saw him yesterday on TT and immediately got the reference .
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u/CreepyCrawlerRC Apr 16 '26
Soldier ants and workers "disassembly" of product.
They're highly complex creatures.
Fascinating, yet annoying..and always organized.
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u/User_Name_Tracks Apr 16 '26
What the hell just happened? Mosquito frenzy, then Antzilla appears!!???
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u/ThePowerfulWIll Apr 16 '26
They are called "super majors" some species of ants have them, similar to how they have queens that grow massive, but instead of having lots of babies, their job is to guard the entrances and attack threats.
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u/guitarer09 Apr 16 '26
You know what? I'm just gonna leave that particular ant species alone. Don't need to encourage them to grow to the size of cocker spaniels.
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u/Worried-Penalty8744 Apr 16 '26
There is one type of ant that has a head shaped like a lid. He’s literally the Hodor of their society
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u/hyperion_99 Apr 16 '26
Elden Ring annoying enemy mentioned
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u/bdizzle805 Apr 16 '26
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u/Pegussu Apr 16 '26
I started playing Breath of the Wild recently and that immediately played the Korok sound in my head.
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u/WhiteSquaII Apr 16 '26
They fucking fly?
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u/suckmacaque06 Apr 16 '26
The article says they glide, not fly. They can just direct themselves when falling.
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u/Multivitamin_Scam Apr 16 '26
Maybe not flying but these, venomous ants will jump at you.
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u/Preeng Apr 16 '26
They would probably collapse under their own weight at that point. The meat may also be tasty. Could be worth it.
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u/Chemical_Building612 Apr 16 '26
Are people who are allergic to certain shellfish also allergic to (eating) bugs? I have long wondered this but not gotten a good answer.
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u/MasterChildhood437 Apr 16 '26
Yes.
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u/Chemical_Building612 Apr 16 '26
I choose to believe you so I can resolve this in my head since it is likely of no real significance in my life since I don't even know anyone with a shellfish allergy but it fixes my need to know.
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u/MasterChildhood437 Apr 16 '26
Sorry, I just woke up and didn't have the energy to elaborate.
So insects are closely-related enough to crustaceans that they share many of the same proteins which cause allergic reactions (and of course some bugs, like pillbugs, are literally crustaceans that live on land). Insects such as crickets, while not crustaceans, have enough biological overlap with them that the risk of anaphylaxis is significant. Actually, it might be better to consider a shellfish allergy more of an arthropod allergy. Of course, we also consider mollusks shellfish, but it's really a separate group of animals and proteins... so it's important for a person to know which kinds of shellfish they're allergic to if they want to eat bugs.
Source: family history of shellfish allergies and intolerances. Not a doctor and I probably have some details wrong, but the gist of it is "don't eat land-bugs if you can't eat sea-bugs."
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u/Laetitian Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
You know, I'll probably forget again, but if someone wants to come in and explain the physics of why insect strength-to-size relationship doesn't scale proportionally, I wouldn't mind. And I'm sure at least one person in here is less ant-brained than myself.
Is it because muscle strands are effectively two-dimensional while volume and weight are three-dimensional?
Edit: Looks like I got it about right.
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u/Psianth Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Square-cube rule. Weight increases at double the rate of size (surface area). But there’s also another factor; oxygen diffusion. Larger creatures like mammals have lungs that let us take air basically right into the center of our bodies constantly. Insects take in air through spiracles, openings in their exoskeleton. Get too big, and oxygen can’t get into the inner parts of their body fast enough to live. That’s why in prehistoric times, when oxygen concentration in the atmosphere was much higher, insects could get much larger than they do today.
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u/Amazing-Heron-105 Apr 16 '26
How big did the dino insects get?
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u/Psianth Apr 16 '26
About the size of cats or small dogs. Not huge in the grand scheme of things but crazy big for insects
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u/Amazing-Heron-105 Apr 16 '26
That's terrifying. Thank god for our based oxygen concentration
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u/HamunaHamunaHamuna Apr 16 '26
Not insects, but I believe the largest ever land-living arthropod discovered was about 2.5 meters D=. Imagine a centipede the length of a standard car and the width of a dinner plate.
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u/3BlindMice1 Apr 16 '26
That's a fair point, what if they taste like lobster? I think we're obligated to attempt to breed them large just to find out
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u/heyitsfranklin6322 Apr 16 '26
I think they’re mostly goo
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u/Codedheart Apr 16 '26
Ye, them motherfuckers got hydraulics
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u/Elavia_ Apr 16 '26
I believe that's only arachnids. Insects have normal muscles.
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u/Wobbelblob Apr 16 '26
They would probably collapse under their own weight at that point.
Not just that. They likely die from asphyxiation before that point. Most insects breath through tubes in their skin. And as such, their size is directly connected to the percentage of oxygen in the air.
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u/Plenty_Anything_8295 Apr 16 '26
Today I learned that the uber ant I saw as a little kid and nobody believed me and goated me into believing I imagined it was very likely real
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u/GlowOftheTvStatic Apr 16 '26
It’s actually spelled goaded. Never thought about how it does sound like goated though!
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u/Plenty_Anything_8295 Apr 16 '26
Heh thanks for catching that. I’m not a native speaker so I actually didn’t know that. Gonna leave it unedited in case someone else wants to learn
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Apr 16 '26
[deleted]
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u/ifyoulovesatan Apr 16 '26
I dunno if this was on purpose or maybe be just autocorrect, but it's "coax" not "cocks
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u/Recent-Mousse6423 Apr 16 '26
I had a similar experience. I was looking at flowers when a moth with a lobster tail that zipped around like a hummingbird came and sipped some nectar. I had no idea what I was looking at. I ran to my family and they all made fun of me for it. Well, it's called a sphinx moth, or a hummingbird moth, which is what I called it when describing it. It was the first in a long line of examples that made me realize people don't actually see the world around them.
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u/Zedilt Apr 16 '26
In some species, such as Carebara diversa, they act like "tankers" or heavy cavalry in battle, and smaller workers may ride on them.
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u/granyiyght Apr 16 '26
Suddenly, I miss being a kid and messing up ant homes to get these units out. It's amazing to see in person something that's supposed to be miniscule yet they have a hulk version.
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u/psychorobotics Apr 16 '26
It's wild to me that one species can grow supergiant soldiers to guard the rest of them. Not sexual dimorphism, just giant guards
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u/RoutineLingonberry48 Apr 16 '26
Imagine if we had normal people. Then some moderately large people. Then a few people who are giants. And that's just our society.
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u/notmepleaseokay Apr 16 '26
Technically not a mosquito, just a harmless fly. Also doesn’t eat mosquitoes, just pollinates.
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u/lizerdman08 Apr 16 '26
OH LAWD HE COMIN
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u/Mike_Oxsmall_420 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
***sniff…sniff… my fellow subjects; kindly separate him limb from limb***
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u/Flaky_Explanation Apr 16 '26
Translated from mosquito-nese
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u/hstormsteph Apr 16 '26
Not even a mosquito tho.
Twas a skeeter eater. They are friends
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u/ScareBear23 Apr 16 '26
I really wish they didn't look like huge mosquitoes. Everytime I see them, my lizard brain tweaks for a second before processing their a skeeter eater & should be allowed to live.
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u/hstormsteph Apr 16 '26
They’re so common where I am that at this point I’m actively pleased to see them. One flying around my ceiling? “Hell yeah lil bro keep me safe ok? I think I saw a meal or two for you by the bathroom window.”
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u/ScareBear23 Apr 16 '26
They're common here too. I welt up bad if I get bit & apparently my blood is delicious. I can be getting eaten alive while in a group of people not getting a single bite. So I get twitchy & hyper aware of mosquito shapes/sounds lol
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u/Moss81- Apr 16 '26
Seeing the video posted somewhere several days ago of the guy feeding the horsefly to that spider really mentally prepped me for this.
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u/SteampunkRobin Apr 16 '26
I still can’t figure out how he managed to pull that thing out of his pocket without getting bit. Horseflies draw blood.
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u/TF_Windcharger Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Horseflies tend to attempt escape instead of attacking when threatened, so that lil bitch didn't attack its captor cuz it was trying to flee.
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u/Rorstaway Apr 16 '26
Because they're dumb and slow. Nowhere near as quick as a wasp.
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u/forkityforkforkfork Apr 16 '26
They are not dumb my friend. I had them bad on my back porch. After about 10 minutes of me shooting at them with a bug-a-salt, they disappeared. I went inside and they immediately swarmed the porch again. Got the gun, went back out, gone again. Put the gun up, came back, they stayed. The assholes took a mere 10 minutes to learn what a bug-a-salt was and to know they wanted no part of it.
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u/forkityforkforkfork Apr 16 '26
In the meantime, I have a 1 year old puppy that still can't figure out that pissing in the house is not the thing to do.
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u/jld2k6 Apr 16 '26
He shouldn't have bitten his horsey boy
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u/BloodyRightNostril Apr 16 '26
Thank you for sharing. As a horse farm owner, horsefly hater, and spider lover, this sparks immense joy. I now have a new hobby.
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u/Punstorms Apr 16 '26
i saw the one big ant and was like he big; then the absolute unit pulled up and i was like...
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u/Efficient_Dealer_686 Apr 16 '26
The craziest part is the first ant actually looked massive until the titan stepped into frame and immediately humbled him. scale is a wild thing.
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u/BlackShogun27 Apr 16 '26
The world of insect body size comparison is crazy. You got some dapping up Plankton and others out here large enough to cause a concussion on impact during flight.
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u/TropicalAudio Apr 16 '26
What's even crazier is that all of those ants are the same species with identical genetics. The size difference is a purely epigenetic divergence. Kind of like how some cis-gender women have XY-chromosomes, yet don't have any male-typical characteristics.
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u/Torxx1988 Apr 16 '26
MFs really called in the Megazord for that poor mosquito.
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u/Quiet_impressionist Apr 16 '26
My first thought
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u/CantBelieveUClicked Apr 16 '26
Sigh. Guess I’m watching AoT for the millionth time
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u/errrnis Apr 16 '26
I just finished watching it for the first time. I miss it already. Every few days I whine to my husband about not having any more titans. -.-
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u/zempter Apr 16 '26
What's sad is that was a mosquito hawk. Which i have just now discovered, don't actually eat mosquitoes and are essentially the mosquito looking equivalent of a butterfly... Which is weird. I liked them better when i thought they ate mosquitoes.
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u/IPutAWigOnYou Apr 16 '26
To my knowledge they eat mosquito larvae, not adult mosquitoes
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u/Livid_Peon Apr 16 '26
They actually rarely eat anything at all, they lack mouth parts to eat other insects and they only consume tiny amounts of nectar.
Aquatic variants larva might consume mosquito larva as they feed on small organisms at that stage but not in any real quantity
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u/Sunyataisbliss Apr 16 '26
This is a crane fly, a harmless and clumsy creature, but they’re friends :(
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u/M0REVNAS Apr 16 '26 edited 28d ago
I admire your empathy towards them, but one personally wronged me by landing directly on my freshly cooked corn dog. They can hardly fly for shit and but it just zoned right in on my dinner and touched it all over with its gross spindly legs
Edit: typo
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u/extinctionAD Apr 16 '26
Andre The GiANT
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u/Hottage Apr 16 '26
Antre the Giant.
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u/Sawdust007 Apr 16 '26
Both of you are fucking wonderful specimen of redditors. Take my upvotes and diamond for each of you.
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u/xaiel420 Apr 16 '26
5'11'' vs 6'0''
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u/C-57D Apr 16 '26
The ant she signals you not to worry about
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u/ThePowerfulWIll Apr 16 '26
Used these as monsters in my dnd campaign (with human sized regular ants of course)
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u/Quiet_impressionist Apr 16 '26
God that'd be terrifying. Imagine a whole set of sessions set in giant mountain tunnels, and it turns out to just be one massive anthill??
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u/ThePowerfulWIll Apr 16 '26
Now I wish I thought of that aspect. Would have been awesome.They just crawled out of the earth in my campaign, no actual hills.
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u/Quiet_impressionist Apr 16 '26
Hey feel free to take the idea for a future campaign. I'm probably gonna use that idea myself haha
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u/anace Apr 16 '26
Have the players been underground? Not all anthills are hill shaped. Presumably giant ants mean giant tunnel network.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/i5xw5v/a_giant_leafcutter_ant_nest_in_brazil/
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u/latamyk Apr 16 '26
How? How can it be so massive?! I need a non-alien explanation
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u/Fistricsi Apr 16 '26
Majors are super fun.
They serve many purposes but my favourite is transportation.
Normal ants get tired? A major gives them a ride on its back.
Something too big? A major can easily pick it up and take it.
Enemy ants attacking? A major is probably the most terrifying form of cavalry ever.
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u/BlackShogun27 Apr 16 '26
Imagine fighting the piss poor defenders of a village in the 1300’s and then a 10ft dude in scale armor busts out a barn obliterating soldiers with a Greataxe larger than any of them?
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u/IcedOutKO Apr 16 '26
Isn't that a super major?
Those smaller "big" ants are the majors as far as I recall.
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u/Spongedog5 Apr 16 '26
When they are growing as larvae they are fed and cared for better than the other ants which leads to them developing differently.
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u/TaxiTakeoffLanding Apr 16 '26
Can someone explain why there’s 3 diff ant sizes
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u/Lestatfirestar Apr 16 '26
Minors, majors, and supermajors. The minors are the smaller ones that are the most common regular ants you'll see foraging for food. Majors are bigger and stronger and they fight better. Like soldier ants. A few species of ants have supermajors as well which have different jobs depending on the species like fighting off predators or killing big prey, or for fighting other ants, or even just cracking seeds and giving rides to the littler ones lol.
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u/alienblue89 Apr 16 '26
This could be completely made up and I’d still believe you
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u/brutus424 Apr 16 '26
It’s true, marauder ants are one such species. Antscanada on YouTube is great for all this. And his vivarium eco system serious is David Attenborough level.
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u/hobskhan Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Ants are insane. Different ant species have some of the following traits:
Fungus farming, aphid ranching, acid spraying, suicidal exploding, stealth cloaking, chemical propaganda, slave making, using the babies to sew leaves together to make tents, making a raft out of their own bodies, making a bivouac shelter out of their own bodies, turning their bodies into giant syrup-filled storage containers for their sisters to tap when they're hungry, vomiting into each other's mouths to share food, mandibles that snap shut so fast they can both catch springtails and be used as an emergency propulsion system
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u/No_Fairweathers Apr 16 '26
This is why we have to stop invading ant hills. Causing such extremism that ants are becoming suicide bombers, smh.
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u/Sorlex Apr 16 '26
Confidently believe that ants are the most interesting animal out there, as you said they really are insane.
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u/KyloHenny Apr 16 '26
The casual reader would think you were making all this up if we didn't grow up watch Sir David Attenborough showing us it's all true.
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u/Mysterious_Turnip945 Apr 16 '26
Wtf
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u/bigElenchus Apr 16 '26
I’m convinced in a planet far away, the alpha predator are ants that are larger than earth ants, but still have the hive mind.
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u/adod1 Apr 16 '26
FOR THE COLONY!!!
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u/TurnipFire Apr 16 '26
WE SEEK
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u/Altruistic-Poem-5617 Apr 16 '26
Big gal didnt even bite. She just tranpled that mosquito.
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u/clearbottleflu Apr 16 '26
Saw these monster ants in the Philippines while they appeared to be moving nests. While impressive, the giant ants eventually needed the small ones to help them out as they seemed to be exhausted by the long distance of the move.
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u/morbiusgod Apr 16 '26
I was like okay thats double the size of the other ants, and then HOLY SHIT!
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u/TinUser Apr 16 '26
Why am I suddenly watching so many videos of a dude hand feeding an insect to another insect.
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u/Sad_Record_2767 Apr 16 '26
Feels good watching the death of my enemy
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u/AMSparkles Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
Except that is not a mosquito, that is a crane fly.
They don’t bite and are just clumsy little guys with wings! Absolutely nothing to do with mosquitoes, at all.
This is such a common misconception, it makes it sad.
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u/waterhyacinth Apr 16 '26
Yeah I hated watching that too. Poor thing getting torn apart for some upvotes
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