Joe MacGown / Mississippi State Entomological Museum-AP
No, this is not a nightmare: hairy crazy ants are apparently invading Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana by the millions. The biting ants are called crazy because they each move at random, achieving much greater speed than an average ant. They can short out industrial equipment, and if one gets electrocuted, it releases a chemical that cues the other ants to attack a threat to the colony. Controlling the ants is expensive and can range from $275 to thousands of dollars per year per house. One possible upside is that the hairy crazy ants kill fire ants, but as one ant expert said, “I prefer fire ants to these. I can avoid a fire-ant colony.”
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