Argentine Ants Gone Global: Let's Fill the Vacuum!

The Argentina meme that seems to be gathering momentum confirmed itself in a spectacular manner in this BBC article: "Ant Megacolony Takes Over World."

Older readers and fans of Fifties monster movies will immediately recall the awful twittering of... Them!. Little did I know back then that those monster ants, instead of just making some dreadful, high-pitched noise that foreran a formic acid injection that would fill a beer bottle, were perhaps whistling a Carlos Gardel tango tune.

Signs point to yes, as my Magic 8 Ball used to confirm.

"Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another. The colony may be the largest of its type ever known for any insect species, and could rival humans in the scale of its world domination,"states the article.

Uh oh!

"In Europe, one vast colony of Argentine ants is thought to stretch for 600km (375 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the US, known as the 'Californian large', extends over 900km along the coast of California."

Most would have speculated that the Spanish coastal colony was most likely made up of British ants, but it appears this is not the case. And who would have guessed that the California group would be Argentine rather than Mexican? The Universe never ceases to surprise!

While Argentine ants colonize the world, perhaps the Universe is sending us the message that it's time for the world to colonize Argentina? After all, this nation is one of the great melting pot nations of the West, yet there remains room for many, many more. Argentina has a population density on the order of 35 persons per square mile, but that figure fails to tell the true story, because the population density in Buenos Aires is on the order of 4,032 per square mile, whereas in the Patagonian province of Chubut, it is closer to two, tops. Outside the 15 major cities, there are fewer than ten million occupying 1,068,322 square miles. This yields a population density slightly greater than that of Canada, much of which is located in an utterly inhospitable climate zone, whereas Argentina is almost entirely in the temperate zone. Patagonia has a population density along the lines of the former Spanish Sahara and lower than that of Mongolia.

Plenty of room here, folks!