(Updated 1/05/12)
The picture below started this post. It is a picture that shows up prominently high on a google image search for ‘fire ant.’ It is also, very clearly, not a fire ant.
Not A Fire Ant
Granted, I spend an unhealthy amount of time getting stung by researching fire ants, and might be presumed to be a bit more familiar with fire ants than the layperson. However, the people who oh-so-proudly and prominently displayed this picture next to a guide for identifying and controlling fire ants were a pest control company, and one could wish that these people would also be a bit more familiar with fire ants than the layperson, particularly as they have taken it upon themselves to educate the public.
I tested my theory that this was clearly not a fire ant by showing it to a non-ant-person, Collin McMichael, a labmate of mine who works on caterpillars and aphids and happened to wander into the room at the right moment. “That’s not a fire ant,” he said.
So, I present to you, my collection of ‘Things That Are Not Fire Ants’, as brought to you by the pest control companies of America.
(If you’d like some tips for identifying fire ants, look for a 2-segmented pedicel–the “waist” of the ant–and 10 segmented antennae, the last two segments of which are slightly enlarged to form a club. Also make sure it’s an ant.)
*new* 14. Falcon’s Pest Control
10. Barrier Termite & Pest Technologies
7. Frontline Pest Control and Aspect Home & Pest
See also: “This is not a harvester ant” and “This is not an Argentine ant.”
(Aspect has not only borrowed most of its incorrect images from Frontline, but they have also used the same image twice for ticks and fleas.)
4. Treasure Coast Pest Control and Mist Pro Outdoor Insect Control
2. ESI Oscala
1. (And my personal favorite) PestMall
Actually, all the fire ant pictures at PestMall are pretty suspicious but this one’s far and away the best. Look closely. That’s not a fire ant. That’s not even an ant. In fact, let’s hop right out of Hymenoptera altogether.
That, my friends, is an earwig. 10 points and a cookie to anyone who uses Alex Wild’s formula to calculate the Taxonomy Fail Index.
And finally, I’ll leave you with my favorite picture that I stumbled across in my Google image search:
This is a fire fire ant. (FreakingNews.com)
*new* (This is NOT a fire fire ant.)
Wow…amazing..you would think they’d know a thing or two about fire ants
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Love the last pic..clearly a fire ant.
Ha! Not only is Frontline’s “Fire Ant” wrong, so are the other two ants. They’re 0 for 3.
Their ‘harvester ant’ makes me smile.
Oh my, the last is even better than one decapitated by a phorid, my previous favourite fire ant.
Could be tricky calculating a taxonomic fail given there seems to be a fair amount of argument about dermapteran relationships, but the split would have to be pretty close to the base of the Neoptera.
Hilarious. I love the doctored fire ant! I will use that for captioning on my ant forum: http://antfarm.yuku.com …
I’m late to the show, but this is hilarious!
Hey, we are reading Tschinkel’s Fire Ants tome over at my blog. Any interest in joining the discussion?