r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/[deleted] • 2d ago
After spotting a line of super strong Weaver Ants marching across a branch, Vietnamese photographer Thanh Ha Bui decided to test their legendary weightlifting skills and captured this incredible image in his parents back garden. Image
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u/Mobile_Acadia_3541
2d ago
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Yeah but how are they at coloring in the lines?
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u/judyvi 2d ago
Ok, but how did he convince the ants to hold onto the pencils.
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u/ROBERT_BOARATHEON 2d ago edited 2d ago
My best guess is he covered them in something like sugar water to convince them its something worth taking home
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u/Wonderful-Traffic197 2d ago
I def misread this as ‘sugar water or cocaine’ 🥴
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u/ROBERT_BOARATHEON 2d ago
Yeah i made a lil typo lol. Id imagine cocaine would probably entice them to bring them home as well 😀
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u/igweyliogsuh 2d ago
Believe it or not, in experiments with mice, sugar water works better and is chosen over cocaine 90%+ of the time 😂
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u/short_insults 2d ago
this is only true if the mouse has other mice to socialize with and it has other sources of stimulation/entertainment otherwise that furry little fuck will be railing tiny lines like it’s going out of style
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u/Evasor1152 2d ago
yeah, like people, they generally only turn to drugs if their environment is some kind of hell. If they have what they need, drugs are just...meh... for most of them.
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u/mayafied 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Rat Park addiction study/experiment was flawed and continues to spread bad ideas about addiction.
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u/steelhead777 2d ago
That’s because sugar is the most addictive substance on earth.
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u/windyorbits 2d ago
No, that’s Oreos.
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u/TakingAMindwalk 2d ago
Which is made with...sugar.
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u/StillestOfInsanities 2d ago
Uh, isnt sugar also necessary for the body to function? I thought carbs were broken down into sugars and used to fuel muscles and brain together with oxygen, but shit, what do i know?
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u/steelhead777 2d ago
Both can be true.
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u/StillestOfInsanities 2d ago
Now thats very true.
So, in the spirit of this, are we in agreement thst the most addictive substances on earth besides sugar are water and air?
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u/steelhead777 2d ago
Sure, but the difference is that water and air are not added to everyday products to enhance their addictiveness.
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u/Amehvafan 2d ago
I doubt they got paid properly for this
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u/Neshgaddal Interested 2d ago
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u/AntelopeFalse8869 2d ago
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u/myleftnippleishard 2d ago
?
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u/Moose_Hole 2d ago
!
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u/HaileSelassieII 2d ago
You only really need to convince one single ant, then the others will assume they should be helping
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u/frangipanivine 2d ago
TIL ants be basic af...if I were their therapist I'd encourage them to think for themselves
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u/deezx1010 2d ago
The Animorophs had a book where they turned themselves into ants for some mission. They all almost went insane from their minds becoming a part of a hive mind.
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u/Burninator05 2d ago
Those books were so unrealistic. Everyone knows that ants don't really have a hive mind (where what one knows, all know). They're all just singularly focused on the same thing.
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u/SuperScabbilicious 2d ago
They kinda do? The chemical markers communicate a lot of info but telepathic who tf really knows? Maybe they operate on some as yet undiscovered organic/biomagnetic frequency.
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u/roguetrick 2d ago
Only free spirits are the male drones. Queens just laying eggs, sterile females doing the work and dying. Male drones flying off to find some strange and dying after doing what they love.
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u/mewhenreal 2d ago
They will not assume anything, ants have cognition and a sophisticated scent-based method of communication. Also, this is fake as fuck.
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u/BonerJams1703 2d ago
The internet is so quick to label anything impressive as fake or staged.
Are you just assuming that or you have a source?
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/JonnySoegen 2d ago
Another comment posted this source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2346018/Theyre-itching-skills-Weightlifting-ants-exhibit-superhuman-strength-lifting-PENCILS.html
You think all photos are faked? Serious question as I can't really tell.
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u/SuperSMT 2d ago
The statement still applies. Convince one ant, and his "sophisticated scents" will communicate to the others that they should be helping.
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u/mewhenreal 2d ago
If I say COME HELP ME and you come help-- there was no assumption made by anyone.
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u/dieinafirenazi 2d ago
He told them they'd get a lot of upvotes if they could draw some big tiddy elves and posted them on Reddit.
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u/SuperScabbilicious 2d ago
Lol jfc the sheer impertinent crassness of your post made me almost shart myself laughing. You crude beast, you
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 2d ago
He actually had them hold onto cheese straws and Photoshopped the pencils in afterwards.
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u/Fenixstorm1 2d ago
Didn't teach them right...
it needs to be held in a stable position between the thumb, index and middle fingers
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u/UnfortunateJones 2d ago
I’m pretty sure like 5 years ago these kind of pictures were popular. Most turned out to be animal abuse. Or dead animals glued into position.
Video or this is 100% fake
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u/Ritius 2d ago
Bro, they’re weaver ants. Don’t spare them your sympathy. If they’re like the ones I saw in Sri Lanka, they’ll grab anything that gets close and try and bite it to death. I used to make them do the wave by passing my hand nearby back and forth.
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u/AssociationLocal1587 2d ago
I witnessed a war between two weaver ant colonies on a railing at a noodle restaurant in Thailand. It was brutal - a very definite front line with bodies everywhere; small groups would charge across the line and get torn limb from limb by the other side. Their jaws don't have venom, but when they bite you, they'll spray acid from their butts onto the wound. It hurts. On top of all that, their larvae are a delicacy. I'm a fan.
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u/hexmode 2d ago
Evidently, he has figured out how to do this with a variety of small objects: source.
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u/_that_random_dude_ 2d ago •
I wouldn’t say small, those pencils look quite above average, one might even say big
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u/theobvioushero 2d ago
This article makes me pretty skeptical. His pictures are of weaver ants, which can carry up to 0.5g of weight. Yet, he shows single ants carrying entire chili pepper, which weigh about 45g. The math just doesn't add up.
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u/HumpyFroggy 2d ago
The one lone ant carrying that skyscraper of a pepper looks sketchy af. But..what's up with the daily mail site? If you scroll too fast they keep sending you to another random article, such a scum of a site.
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u/Vile-X 2d ago
I can single handedly carry a least 10 more.
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u/MediocreX 2d ago
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u/6chan 2d ago
That subreddit makes me cringe more than /r/cringe
I could crush my skull gnashing my teeth so hard with the cringe from /r/humblebrag
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u/Budget_Pop9600 2d ago
This will soon be in every school library across America with an “inspiring quote”
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u/Mynoodles_mostmoist 2d ago
5 on the table if it’s something about teamwork.
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u/Budget_Pop9600 2d ago
“Alone we can do little, but with teamwork we can achieve greatness”
But I like how “teamwork” is actually just a hive-mind in this instance
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u/Imadethosehitmanguns 2d ago
And then removed from every school because it supports the gay ant agenda.
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u/Budget_Pop9600 2d ago
Dont worry Florida schools dont have libraries anymore because they burned all the books
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u/Stanky_Fangers 2d ago
Replace the gay pencils with Assault rifles, and you'd make a ton of money selling these in the south.
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u/frangipanivine 2d ago
Istg I thought the pencils were the point of this...maybe they'd eat them? Then I was like wait that's termites. Then I wondered if they were drawn to the colors? But it appears it's just food to them (sugar water) Pretty incredible mos def tho.
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u/Firm-Ad-2109 2d ago
Mans said hold my pencils
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u/AcerbicWhimsy 2d ago
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing something nice in a sphere with a whole lotta rubbish.
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u/Professional_Flicker 2d ago
Apparently if a man had the proportionate strength of a weaver ant, we could lift 9 tons.
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u/harrypottermcgee 2d ago
Yea, but if an ant was the size of a man it would probably suffocate due to slow gas diffusion or some stupid thing like that. Being proportionally strong is like being pretty fly for a white guy.
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u/CLIT_MASTA_4000 2d ago
i remember reading that a lot of these are totally fake and actually fucked up how they make them. they glue the insects to the items.
why is there no video of this? because the pics are staged.
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u/Helenium_autumnale 2d ago
Is this another photographer glueing animals to props to make cute poses, like that Indonesian (iirc) guy?
Otherwise I find it HIGHLY unlikely that this photo could be naturally generated.
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u/BriggsWellman 2d ago
Oh come on...roygbiv
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u/runningwaffles19 2d ago
Thank you! You're a photographer/artistically inclined, and you don't put this in rainbow order? I'd also accept VIBGYOR
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u/Filled_banana 2d ago
Gay ants
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u/Boobsnbutt 2d ago
I don’t believe it. The purple one is being held by one ant’s head and another’s arm.
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u/DatRandomHooman 2d ago
Idk why but this low-key seems fake, I saw a army of ants carrying a potato chip on the wall in my grand parents house and they were struggling
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u/Medium-Impression190 2d ago
Have you seen weaver ant? They pulled leaves and branches to weave into their nest. Their bite is strong enough that South East Asian parents used to tie their misbehaving kids to tree infested with these ants.
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u/ginyuforce 2d ago
Their bite is pain as fuck tho, and they are everywhere.
They will bite anything if u shove it to them
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u/mewhenreal 2d ago
This is high key very fake. A pencil weighs ~16 grams, a weaver ant weighs ~5mg. They can carry 50x their weight max, and that's generous.
16g / 5mg = 3,200
It would take 64 ants each lifting 50x their bodyweight to carry a pencil, and even then they couldn't just dangle it from the long end like that.
There are only 2 ants on that purple pencil, and they're barely touching it.
This is mathematically fake as fuck.
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u/becausefrog 2d ago edited 2d ago
YSK those are not full-sized pencils. They are 'golf' pencils with colored lead, which is essentially wax as opposed to graphite. They weigh about 2 grams.
Weaver ants can lift 100x their body weight.
Do the math, but do your research first. Yes, it's still sus, but more correctly so. (I suspect the two ants are in the process of dropping that one pencil on the end. The photographer was using a high enough shutter speed to capture it before it dropped.)
The average full-sized #2 pencil weighs 6-7 grams. It appears that you took 16g from the first hit on Google which was a math quizlet question using a hypothetical number set that does not reflect reality because it's meant to illustrate a math concept rather than a fact about pencils. It's an easy mistake to make, which is why you should always check several sources, and make sure to click on them and analyze the value of the source before trusting it.
Google is a great tool, but it will do you wrong if you don't double check and verify.
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u/duckduckbananas 2d ago
Don't let Fox News see this, the next news cycle will be about the ants going 'woke'
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u/hopelessnecromantic7 2d ago
How do the ants hold onto it? Are the compressing their arms together or do they have tiny microscopic hooks like Tobey Maguire?
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u/seikats239 2d ago
But why don't they fall? Are their tiny feet holding onto the branch with immense force?
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u/adamgoodapp 2d ago
What's the human equivalent?
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u/clonexx 2d ago
Average ant weighs .00001 KG. Average human in the US is around 77KG. So a human is 7.7 million times the weight of the average ant. Average pencil weighs .006 KG. Two ants are holding each pencil, so in effect they are each holding 300 times their body weight. That’s the equivalent of a 77KG person lifting 23,100 KG or about 50,900 pounds.
Yes, I’m bored.
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u/GreatDayneToBeAlive Expert 2d ago
"Mom! Thanh is in the backyard trying to feed the ants colored pencils again."
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u/BessYaBa7ar 2d ago
Anyone anyone knows that ants can’t move a rubber tree plant! But he had high hopes, high apple pie in the sky hopes! 🎵
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u/redditcruzer 2d ago
Perhaps even antman doesn't have those convincing powers.
Good photoshop?
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u/Affectionate_Bus7056 2d ago
If it is 'good photoshop' why aren't they holding up a Russian T-72?!???!
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u/mikejpatten 2d ago
Don't let those pink Floyd fans see this, might start burning ants in their bottomless pit of insecurity.
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u/PoopFartCumToe 2d ago
This is cool. I also realized, as an American, if I went to a Vietnamese restaurant and all the menus Items were just peoples names I wouldn’t even notice. Could I open an American restaurant over there and just have menus items like Tom Arnold, Suzanne Portsmouth, or the Eric Cummings and they’d just be like “yea that sounds yummy”?
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u/kanemano 2d ago
I'll have a Tom Collins and she'll have a Arnold Palmer, and to eat we'll share a Rueben
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u/rpgguy_1o1 2d ago
I looked into it once and Tom Collins isn't a real person, but it has an interesting back story.
Tom comes from the type of gin that was originally used, Old Tom Gin, which is actually in reference to tom-cats rather than a man named Tom.
It's a play on a John Collins cocktail, which was a real person, using specifically Old Tom Gin, rather than any other London dry. Nowadays, Tom Collins is the ubiquitous cocktail, regardless of the type of gin used, because of The Great Tom Collins Hoax Of 1874 in the USA.
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u/tenkohime 2d ago
I've been to restaurants where the menu is people's names as a gimmick, so it could work.
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u/Decent_Birthday358 2d ago
Cue Alex Jones ranting and raving about Vietnamese communists turning the ants gay.
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u/Low-Requirement195 2d ago
No one else is confused as to why this photographer just happened to have a pocket full of baby sized color pencils?
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u/Iancreed 2d ago
What exactly makes them so strong biologically?
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u/Carson_H_2002 2d ago
The smaller you are, the more efficient your muscles are is the correct answer.
An elephants individual muscles are far larger and stronger than an ants, but a portion of this strength goes to lifting the mass of the elephant.
A human example would be a dead lifter, they arnt just lifting a weight but the weight of their arms and chest and head.
Edit: this is the answer to the question whether the photo is fake or not.
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u/Twadder_Pig 2d ago
Is this like the "give 1000 monkeys typewriters and eventually they'll create a masterpiece?"
Except this time it's "give the ants artistic tools and they'll reproduce the Mona Lisa?".
Should be an interesting study!
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u/Damnthatsinteresting-ModTeam 2d ago
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