20 SEXIEST LAPTOPS OF ALL TIME

20 Sexiest Laptops of All Time
By Sherri L. Smith, Laptop, 30 September 2013.

Forget Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutins. There’s just something about a beautiful laptop that heats up our CPUs. What makes a notebook truly sexy? It could be stunning colour options, remarkably sleek lines, premium materials, unique textures, customizable lighting or all of the above. From the original iBook (remember that?) to the most striking systems Dell, HP and Lenovo have debuted, here are our picks for 20 of the sexist notebooks of all time. These laptops look so good, we had to do a double take…twice.

1. Acer Aspire S7 (2013)

If laptops were models, the Acer Aspire S7 would rule the runway. The notebook's waifish profile is a mere 0.51 inches thick, making it one of the thinnest ultraportables on the market. But don’t confuse slim with frail, as the Aspire S7's lid is made of scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 2.

The remainder of the chassis is pristine aluminium. Just like any supermodel, the S7 is also surprisingly flexible. The 1080p touch screen can fold back 180 degrees so two people can gaze upon its beauty.

More: Acer Aspire S7-392-6411: Full Review

2. MacBook Air (2008)

Behold the notebook that revolutionized laptop design. When the MacBook Air made its debut, we were wowed by its barely there silver anondized aluminium chassis. By shrinking most of the major components, the notebook weighed 3 pounds and measured a wafer-thin 0.8 inches at its thickest point.

A laughably short battery life and having only one USB port marred what was otherwise a beautiful machine, but those problems would be resolved in later models with the same look and feel.

More: MacBook Air (2008) Review

3. Dell Adamo (2010)

Do you believe in love at first sight? Named after the Latin root for “to fall in love,” this beautiful notebook was once the thinnest in the world at 0.7 inches. We can’t lie, our hearts did flutter at the sight of the aluminium wrapped magnesium chassis that not only looked good, but resisted fingerprints as well.

Thanks to the unique placement of the notebook hinges, the Adamo slightly resembled a ballerina en pointe. However, the Adamo’s sexiest feature was the way it opened when you placed a finger in the indentation at the top of the lid and it detected your body heat, which was already turned up to maximum just from looking at this luscious laptop.

More: Dell Adamo XPS Review

4. Alienware M17x (2009)

Enough with the skinny minis! We like a notebook with a little junk in its trunk. Alienware has always been known for its high-end specs and eye-catching design. However, the 2009 model of the M17x was a vision of power and elegance. The bright red aluminium lid was striking, as was the notebook’s front grille, which resembled a high-powered muscle car. Best of all, opening the notebook treated users to their own personal light show via the massive keyboard and its customizable lighting.

More: Alienware M17x (2009) Review

5. Toshiba mini NB205 (2009)

When netbooks were popular, the Toshiba mini NB205 was the fairest of them all. The Sable Brown lid (also available in white, black, red and electric blue) and its bronze hinges gave the notebook a rather regal appearance. The lid also sported a raised horizontal pattern that invited users to touch. The mini’s 6-cell battery juts out from the back like an elegant chignon bun, accentuating the sleek, silver deck.

More: Toshiba mini NB205 Review

6. Apple iBook G3 (1999)

The mobile version of the iMac G3, the iBook G3 sported a funky clamshell design and an integrated handle, perfect for travel. Apple added a splash of colour to the white chassis by offering a choice of five colourful, fruit-flavoured accents. While we were suckers for Blueberry, consumers could also choose Tangerine, Graphite, Indigo and Key Lime. Despite being nicknamed “Barbie’s toilet seat” by critics, the colourful notebook went on to be a commercial success.

7. Voodoo Envy 133 (2008)

Someone brought boxy back…or attempted to. Marketed as an ultralux competitor to the MacBook Air, the Voodoo Envy’s boxy design could have been featured in a Robert Palmer video. The high gloss lid with its futuristic fleur de lis logo in the centre was opulent yet refined. The 0.7-inch thick notebook was available in 14 colours, including Black Weave. The high gloss treatment continued on the notebook’s interior and featured a unique dimpled touchpad. Unfortunately, HP discontinued this sleek line in 2009.

More: Voodoo Envy 133 Review

8. ASUS NX90 (2010)

The ASUS NX90 would have been right at home in the world of "Minority Report." When closed, the NX90 looked like a futuristic stealth bomber. The clean lines and rounded edges lend a subtle grace to the design. Opening the notebook revealed a clean silver palm rest offset by a black keyboard deck. The 18.4-inch display was flanked by a pair of speakers powered by Bang and Olufsen’s SonicMaster technology, a first for the series. The NX90 was the notebook equivalent of an all-in-one entertainment centre. [ASUS NX90Jq]

9. Lenovo Skylight (2010)

Call this our fantasy notebook. It appears that Lenovo borrowed the iBook’s clamshell shape and updated the look with a millennial design. First spotted at CES 2010, the Skylight was supposed to come in a tantalizing ruby red and sapphire blue. The deck was delicately lined with chrome, adding a nice contrast to the black interior. Alas, the Skylight never went into production, because the SmartBook concept seemed out-dated when tablets hit the scene. [Video]

10. Samsung Series 9 (2011)

Ready to join the Mile High Club? Constructed mostly from Duralumin, a metal used to build airplanes, Samsung Series 9 took sexy to all new levels. The material is twice as strong as aluminium, creating a tantalizing mix of beauty and durability. Drawing inspiration from its aircraft roots, the Series 9 boasted a sensual curve along the top and the sides that lent it an air of sophistication. Top it off with a brushed metal interior and you had a machine that out-sexyed the Air. [Video]

More: Samsung Series 9 (13-inch) Review

11. Sony VAIO X505 (2004)

When you think of cyclists, you think of tight muscular bodies with sleek definition. It was the same thing with the Sony VAIO X505. This 1.9-pound beauty was constructed from a nickel-carbon composite most notably found in bikes, where it's used for lightweight durability. Bucking typical design trends, Sony placed the power button in one of the notebook’s circular hinges. Although the keyboard deck could have been placed higher up along the graphite-finished interior, the X505 was still a thing of beauty.

12. HP Mini Vivienne Tam Edition (2008)

The love child of high fashion and high technology, the HP Vivian Tam Mini turned heads wherever it went. A special edition of the HP Mini 1000, this nice-looking netbook was designed by fashionista Vivienne Tam. The first edition of this “digital clutch” was a vision in red, with a bold floral print cascading along its lid and a golden back hinge that completed the motif. Opening the notebook revealed more of that tantalizing red, including a crimson keyboard, a must-have for any fashion maven. [Video]

13. Lenovo IdeaPad U110 (2008)

When it first debuted, the Lenovo IdeaPad U110 was oh so cherry. No, seriously, it was decked out with a cherry red lid we couldn’t take our eyes off of. But the U110 went beyond our little red corvette fantasies, captivating us with a subtle tendril pattern on top and a Greek key pattern on the underside. The interior had a high-gloss look that made typing a little difficult, but we could forgive a few slip ups for such a good-looking machine.

More: Lenovo IdeaPad U110 Review

14. Razer Blade (2012)

The second-generation Razer Blade conjures images of a young James Dean - beautiful and dangerous. Reminiscent of a muscle car’s hood, the matte black aluminium lid has a seductive green three-headed snake insignia in the middle. The interior features more black aluminium, a large island-style keyboard and a rebellious 3.5 x 2.3-inch LCD that acts as the touchpad with 10 LCD macro buttons. However, instead of sitting meekly centred below the G and H keys, the Blade’s touchpad sits to the right of the keyboard, buck all trends with a devil may care attitude.

More: Razer Blade Review

15. ASUS Lamborghini VX3-A1Y (2008)

Let’s face it. There are few things sexier than a hot car. If you didn’t have US$375K laying around for a Lambo back in 2008, you could get the next best thing in the US$3,300 ASUS Lamborghini VX3-A1Y. Available in black or yellow, the VX3-A1Y was decked out with the same paint job used on the iconic ride, complete with the logo.

ASUS constructed this 12-inch luxury portable's frame from titanium alloy, and the interior revealed a long speaker bar along with a sapphire crystal webcam. We especially loved the genuine leather palm rest. Best of all, this notebook made a "vroom vroom" sound when you booted it.

More: ASUS Lamborghini VX3-A1Y Review

16. HP Envy 14 Spectre (2011)

Vanity, thy name is Envy 14 Spectre. One of HP’s first Ultrabooks, the Spectre stood out from the crowd with its obsidian scratch-resistant glass lid. Polished within an inch of its life, this 14-incher was gorgeous and came in handy as a mirror for our “I feel pretty" moments. A gorgeous edge-to-edge display greeted us upon opening the lid while a silver notebook deck with a glass palm rest finished the look. A few bright red Beats Audio accents pulled it all together.

More: HP Envy 14 Spectre Review

17. IBM ThinkPad 701C (1995)

The IBM ThinkPad 701C is the sexy librarian on our list. This precursor to the present-day Lenovo business notebook was rather unassuming on the outside. However, opening the 701C revealed its true beauty. A pair of sliding pieces gracefully unfurled to form a fully functional "butterfly" keyboard. The 701C went on to become the best selling laptop of 1995 and has a permanent place in the Museum of Modern Art. How’s that for sexy?

18. ASUS Zenbook UX51Vz-DH71 (2013)

The ASUS Zenbook UX51Vz-DH71 is the very picture of elegance and sophistication. The dark silver lid has a spun metal design, creating the illusion of water ripples emanating from the ASUS insignia. The interior deck is awash in light grey aluminium. The rear hinge slopes forward in a graceful arc, showing off the speaker. Throw in a gorgeous 1080p display and you've got a notebook that's hard to take your eyes off it.

More: ASUS Zenbook UX51Vz-DH71: Full Review

19. HP Pavilion dv2000 (2006)

Just call the HP Pavilion dv2000 a trendsetter. Although the glossy piano black lid had crazy sex appeal, it was the HP Imprint underneath the coating that stole the show. The seductively undulating HP Imprint design led to HP's Radiance and Dragon patterns. It also launched a sea of copycats from the likes of Dell, Gateway and others that wanted to ramp up their sexy factor.

20. Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga (2012)

Lenovo has turned heads and put yogis to shame with the super flexible IdeaPad Yoga laptop. Swathed in a luxurious, grey soft-touch finish, the notebook feels as good as it looks. Thanks to the pair of sturdy aluminium  hinges, the Yoga can contort into four multi-modes (Tablet, Laptop, Stand and Tent), allowing users to bend the display back a full 360. Downward dog has never looked so good.

[Source: Laptop. Edited. Some links added.]

14 REAL AND VISIONARY HISTORIC MONORAIL DESIGNS

Retro Rail: 14 Real & Visionary Historic Monorail Designs
By Steph, Web Urbanist, 30 September 2013.

There’s nothing on earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified six-car monorail. Or a one-car monorail with a propeller, or a high-speed rail plane, or even an amphibious monorail that can go from the elevated track right into the water. Some of these concepts were doomed from the start, some never got enough support to get off the ground and others still stand today.

1. Mountain Monorail with Propeller, 1936

This fanciful concept illustrated by Kikuzo Ito in 1936, was invented by an American. The airplane propeller and tailfin keep the small car upright as it rides along the track in the mountains. An extra set of wheels extend from the sides to provide stability when it comes to a stop.

2. Wuppertal Schwebebahn, 1901-Present

While most early monorail systems either never made it past testing stages or were dismantled soon after construction, the Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Wuppertal, Germany remains in operation after over a century. It was initially designed to be sold to the city of Berlin; the first track opened in 1901. The cars have been replaced over the decades, but since then, the monorail line has been closed just once. It moves 25 million passengers each year.

3. Bennie Railplane, 1930

The propeller-driven Bennie Railplane, designed in 1930 by George Bennie, was a prototype that aimed to solve the problem of more economical and rapid transport via a high-speed monorail link from London to Paris. A short test track was built in Glasgow, Scotland, but the economic troubles of the ’30s doomed the project. The test track hung around, rusting and abandoned, through the 1950s.

4. Boyes Monorail, 1911

The test track for the William H. Boyes Monorail was built and demonstrated in 1911 in Seattle, Washington, with wood rails and an estimated cost of about US$3,000 per mile. When it opened, the Seattle Times proclaimed, “The time may come when these wooden monorail lines, like high fences, will go straggling across country, carrying their burden of cars that will develop a speed of about 20 miles per hour.”

5. Amphibious Monorail, 1934

Twin amphibian cars zoom from the desert into the open sea in this concept, dreamed up by the Soviet Government and featured in Popular Science in 1934. The idea was that the cars, which could reach up to 180 miles per hour, could travel three monorail lines totalling 332 miles in length in order to tap mineral wealth in Turkestan. They were reportedly tested in Moscow.

“The cars would be equipped with Diesel-electric drive, and each would carry forty passengers or an equivalent freight load,” explained Popular Science. “Where the longest of the projected routes crosses the river Amu-Daria, a mile and a quarter wide, it is proposed that amphibian cars be used. On arriving at the shore the cars would leave the overhead rail and cross the river as a boat. Soviet engineers are reported already surveying the route.”

6. Guided Flying Monorail, 1915

Another monorail concept featured in Popular Science was Francis Laur’s ‘guided flying monorail,’ designed in 1915. “Francis Laur would combine the airplane with the railway. An egg-shaped car with short wings is driven in regular airplane fashion. Instead of flying away it is confined to a definite path by a rail. ‘Guided flight,’ Laur, the inventor, calls his idea. Is it practical? Maybe and maybe not. Which is to say that for some things it is and for some things it isn’t.”

7. US Centennial Monorail, 1876

This double-decker, steam-driven train glides along a track at the U.S. Centennial Expo in Philadelphia in 1876. It featured an ornate car with two main wheels, the rear one driven by a rotary steam engine. Designed by General LeRoy Stone, this monorail transported attendees of the expo back and forth between the Agricultural and Horticultural Halls.

8. U.S. Senate Monorail, 1912

From 1912-1961, U.S. Senators didn’t have to worry about walking back and forth between buildings above ground with the plebes. They simply hopped onto “the shortest and most exclusive railway in the world,” an underground monorail that ran through tunnels below the U.S. Senate building.

“The distance between the old Senate Office Building and the Capitol was only a fifth of a mile, but senators needed to traverse it multiple times on a typical legislative day… In 1912, the Senate authorized installation of a double-line electric monorail system that ran on fixed tracks. Built by the Columbia Construction Company, the trains held up to 18 passengers each, in rows of wicker seats. Senators received priority in boarding the cars, and the front seats were reserved for them at all times.” The whole story can be read at the Senate website.

9. Aerial Mono-Flyer of the Future, 1918

Electrical Experimental magazine featured this concept for the “aerial mono-flyer of the future” in 1918, another guided flying device perching precariously on a single line, looking a little less than safe.

10. ALWEG Monorail, 1959

The ALWEG monorail was the original Disneyland Monorail System, which opened in 1959, as well as the Seattle Centre Monorail, built for the 1962 Worlds Fair.

11. Pedal-Powered Monorail, 1800s

This drawing from sometime in the mid 1800s, thought to be of French origin, envisions a pedal-powered monorail. The idea is being revived for modern times in the form of the ‘Shweeb.’

12. Monoline Express, 1961

Illustrated for the Closer Than We Think! comic strip in 1961, the Monoline Express of the future is a combination of an automatic highway and a high-speed monorail system in which private cars use a ‘high road’ to commute to town or travel between cities. In this concept, cars could travel almost bumper-to-bumper at speeds of 120 miles per hour or more, and then get off and go about business as usual on the regular roads.

13. Skyway Monorail, Houston, 1956

A pilot monorail line made its debut at Arrowhead Park in Houston in 1956, with a 55-passenger coach making three trips at speeds less than 10 miles per hour. According to the Houston Chronicle, “Reaction to the trip was varied. The most general comment was that it was interesting and had possibilities, but more investigation into the costs is needed.” It was dismantled a few months later.

14. Russian Monorail, 1900

Russia developed a series of monorail systems starting in 1820 with a ‘road on pillars’ upon which horses pulled railroad carriages. By 1900, Empress Maria Federovna approved the building of a .12 mile electric monorail in Gatchina as an experiment. Like many of the other designs, it was never fully funded.

[Source: Web Urbanist. Edited.]

Related Posts:

1. Germany’s Hanging Train: The World’s First And Only Suspended Monorail

2. 10 Greatest Mass Transit Failures in History

10 COOLEST NON-PLANETARY OBJECTS IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM

10 Coolest Non-Planetary Objects In Our Solar System
By Kier Harris, Listverse, 1 October 2013.

Space is awesome. There’s no arguing that. But all of the really cool stuff is way out there - beyond the edges our solar system - in deep space. In fact, our solar system is pretty lousy. Everyone learns about it in first grade: You’ve got nine planets (or eight since Pluto got the boot), a few boring moons flying around them, the Sun, and that’s pretty much it - right? Actually, space has more wonders than you could possibly imagine, and some of them are right in our backyard.

10. The Asteroid With Its Own Moon

Logic would dictate that anything smaller than a planet doesn’t have the gravitational pull to hold onto a moon, but that's not always the case. Enter 243 Ida, an asteroid that’s only 30 kilometres (19 mi) across when you measure it the longest possible way. Ida has a tiny, 1.6-kilometre (1 mi) moon orbiting it (Dactyl). It’s the first binary system of asteroids that we found and the only one we’ve done a close enough flyby of to get clear pictures, but we’ve since discovered over a dozen binary asteroids.

9. Io

If ever there was a world that should remind you of Hell, it’s Jupiter’s moon Io. Seeming more like something out of Middle Earth than reality, Io has more volcanic activity than any body in our solar system. This geologic activity is caused by the intense tidal forces between Io and Jupiter, which are constantly pulling and stretching the moon.

The eruptions on Io can be enormous, coating over 30 square kilometres (11.6 sq mi) in volcanic material, and they can be seen from space.

Io’s route through Jupiter’s magnetosphere causes it to generate great amounts of electricity that make lightning storms in Jupiter’s upper atmosphere. But don’t think Jupiter gets the worst of this interaction - its intense magnetic belts strip 1,000 kilograms of material off of Io every second. This has the added effect of supercharging Jupiter’s magnetosphere, effectively doubling its size.

8. Pluto Isn’t Anything Like We Thought

Despite how long we’ve known Pluto existed, we know surprisingly little about the dwarf planet. For example, that photo up there? That’s the clearest image of Pluto we have, and even that is cobbled together from several shots.

This is because space is big - staggeringly, stupid, crazy big. At its absolute closest, Pluto is 4.2 billion kilometres (2.6 billion miles) away, which is a number so big that our brains don’t really know what it means. The most powerful telescopes we have only give us a grainy, out-of-focus image at that enormous of a distance.

But these images are sharp enough to tell us that Pluto is nothing like we first imagined: a boring hunk of rock. Its surface is a carbon-rich mixture of white, black, and dark orange, and we’ve observed the poles lightening and darkening over time. Our best guess at present is that these are seasonal changes, spurred on by the distant sun that sublimates surface methane and flings it into the atmosphere (yeah, it has one of those, too).

7. Mimas

That’s no moon...actually, it is. You’re looking at Mimas, a moon of Saturn and one of the most heavily cratered objects in the solar system. It also happens to look just like the Death Star. And before you say, “Well, clearly Mimas was the inspiration for the Death Star,” we’ll just mention that the crater wasn’t discovered until three years after Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Mimas is also quite mysterious; its orbit is closer to Saturn than Enceladus (its icy neighbour). Both moons are composed almost entirely of ice, but only Enceladus is tidally heated by Saturn enough to melt the ice and create geysers that shoot water into space. This doesn’t make a lot of sense because Mimas is much closer to Saturn, and its orbit is less circular, which should mean it experiences more heating than Enceladus. We have no idea why it doesn’t.

6. Ganymede

Ganymede is the largest moon in the solar system, and it’s even larger than the planet Mercury - meaning it’d be a planet if it were orbiting the Sun instead of Jupiter. It has its own magnetic field as well, something that no other moon can claim.

It also has a thin oxygen atmosphere, but it’s nowhere near thick enough to support life. Ganymede’s craters are very flat when compared to most moons, which suggests geologic activity below the surface - not surprising for something so large and so close to Jupiter.

5. Saturn’s Enormous Ring

The one thing everyone thinks of when Saturn is mentioned is its vast array of rings. And while it’s certainly not the only planet with a ring system, they’re definitely the most spectacular example. What we didn’t know until recently is that Saturn’s ring system extends much farther than we first thought.

The ring, made of dust and ice, has eluded discovery for so long because it’s almost invisible, and if you don’t look at it in infrared, it’s easy to miss. The sheer size of the ring is hard to visualize - it begins 6 million kilometres (3.7 million miles) from Saturn and extends all the way out to 12 billion kilometres (7.5 billion miles). It’s 20 times as thick as the planet’s height, and Saturn isn’t small. You’d have to use one billion Earths to fill the space the ring takes up.

4. The Solar System Limits

As much as we’ve learned about our solar system, there are still simple questions that we just can’t answer. You know, questions like “how large is this thing anyway?” When you were in school, you probably learned that Pluto was the farthest thing from the Sun in our solar system. But then we discovered Eris, the largest known dwarf planet (and the object that made us revoke Pluto’s planethood), twice the distance Pluto is from the Sun. What’s beyond that? The Oort Cloud, a spherical “cloud” of comets near the edge of the Sun’s reach.

And beyond that? Well, in 1977, we launched two deep space probes (Voyager 1 and Voyager 2). They’re still in contact with us 36 years later, and we only just realized that Voyager 1 left the solar system. Simply put, the presence of plasma coming from other stars has indicated that the probe finally made it out, and...we don’t know a whole lot more just yet. Now we just need to get as much data as possible before it runs out of power (projected to happen around 2025).

3. Hyperion

Hyperion, which looks a lot like a sponge, is the largest moon in the solar system that isn’t spherical. It never rotates quite the same way because Titan, a nearby moon, keeps pulling it in different directions.

Hyperion’s density is just above half the density of water (so it would float, provided a large enough ocean), which is the reason for its spongy appearance; anything that collides with the moon penetrates deeper because of Hyperion’s low density. A spongy moon that floats on water - now we just need to find one that looks like a bar of soap. Oh, we already found one? Good work, NASA.

2. Ceres

Ceres (lower-left in the above image) is the only dwarf planet in the “main” part of the solar system. It’s located in the asteroid belt and hogs up all the material in the area (it makes up one-third of all the belt’s matter). Imagine we had the capability to launch the state of Texas into space, and you’ll have a general idea of how large Ceres is, but probably a disproportionate idea of how many guns it has.

Because of the ambiguous definition of “asteroid,” it’s the only dwarf planet in the solar system that is also an asteroid - the largest in the belt. Ceres likely has more water below its surface than all of the Earth’s oceans combined.

1. Space

There are so many awesome things in our solar system that we often forget how empty it really is. They call it “space” for a reason. That’s what it mostly is: empty space. (That’s an image of the Earth and the Moon up there - just look at all that room.)

The Sun itself is 99.8 percent of all the mass in the solar system. Logically, that means that everything else - the enormous gas giants; every asteroid, comet, and meteoroid; and smaller planets like Earth - comprise only 0.2 percent of the matter, most of which is Jupiter.

The Sun itself, which is so large that its volume is 600 times greater than everything in the solar system combined, is less than one-trillionth of a percent of the entire solar system’s volume. There’s so much empty space in our solar system that it’s impossible for the human mind to truly grasp it.

[Source: Listverse. Edited.]

INFOGRAPHIC: 15 SMARTPHONE APPS THAT PAY YOU FOR USING THEM

Apps Which Pay You
By Top Apps, 16 September 2013.

Have you ever checked how much money you pay for your smartphone apps? The amount that you spend on the app depends on the type of app that are you planning to download and to surprise you, the infographic below shows several legit reward apps that help you make money. All you need is just take part in the surveys, watch trailers and collect points which can be redeemed later into gift cards, coupons and free vouchers.

Users can collect points through any iPhone, iPad or Android powered mobile devices by just a single tab on their device’s screen. With advent of mobile technology, your much-loved smartphone can do anything from time management to entertainment and it even helps you earn a few bucks by just sitting on your couch at home.

There are some apps that pay for grabbing pictures and uploading them on to their official site, while others pay users for predicting the result of game before its gets started. An app named ‘CheckPoints’ will assists the users by rewarding points and to avail these points, users need to just watch videos and scan the barcodes. Irrespective of the mobile operating system, the few apps that pay users include Mobile Rewards, Field Agent, Locket, EasyShift, NPolls and ESPN Streak For The Cash.

Infographic by Top Apps

Top image: Screen captured from YouTube

[Source: Top Apps. Edited. Top image added.]

Related Post: Top 5 Apps That Help You Earn Some Extra Money

TOP 10 AWESOME THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT ANTS

Top 10 Awesome Things You Didn’t Know About Ants
By Petros Bojo, Toptenz, 30 September 2013.

We share our food, and even our homes, with ants, and can’t seem to get away from them, no matter where we travel. But, despite their relative constancy in our lives, we don’t seem to know much about ants, aside from the fastest way to kill them. As it turns out, there are a great many intriguing facets about ants, many of which paint the little critters as shockingly close to human. As it turns out…

10. They Can Stitch Up Wounds

Minor wounds are considered just an annoyance, with advanced medicine just a call away. However, if we are in the middle of the African Savannah, with no first aid kit, and the nearest help we can get is still days away, fixing that little wound can mean life or death. Apparently, some tribes, like the Masai Tribe in East Africa, faced the same problem and found an easy first aid trick on the go - the army ant’s strong pincers.

If a Masai warrior is out in the African bush and suffers a wound that needs stitching, all he needs to do is look for an Army Ant’s nest and pick a few of the biggest ants he could find and have them bite both sides of the wound then break off the body, leaving just the head. The seal created by the makeshift surgical staples can last for days, and can be easily replaced if needed.

9. Before God Created Man, He Created Ants First

We all know that we, as a species, are relative newbies in the whole of creation, evolving a mere five million years ago. Now, compare that to a living fossil like the ant, who has been around since the Cretaceous Period, about 110 - 130 million years ago. The age gap, and the relative high social evolution of the ants, may mean that only a fluke roll of the celestial dice made the difference in regards to which species came first.

8. They Dispose Of Their Dead

Only a few living beings on Earth treat their dead with some relative deference: humans, elephants, and shockingly, ants. They even have undertakers to do it. When an ant dies inside the nest, they will carry the dead body outside for sanitation’s sake, so that infection or disease cannot spread to the entire colony. Though any worker ant may carry the body outside, it seems that there is a special ant undertaker that will usually do the cleaning up.

7. They Can Clone Themselves

Parthenogenesis is a form of reproduction where there is no need for fertilization, making the resulting offspring a clone of the mother. A group of Amazonian ants was found to give birth to clones of themselves, creating a colony with no males around and somewhat echoing the legend of the fierce Amazons who do not tolerate male company.

Not to be outdone, the males of the small fire ant, whose queens also practice parthenogenesis in giving birth to new queens, makes sure that their genetic legacy spreads on by cloning themselves. This special trick of the male small fire ant involves eliminating the female genome in some of the fertilized eggs, making the ant a perfect clone of the father. This unique reproductive manoeuvrings of both the female and male small fire ant results in a nest, composing of ants of the same species, that has the genetic makeup of three completely different species; the queen clones, the male clones, and the sterile female workers with mixed genes.

6. They Teach Their Young

As social insects, ants have a very advanced system going on in their colonies, in order to insure their survival worker ants are put into groups that does various specialized jobs like foraging, janitorial services, or caretaker of eggs and baby ants. What is surprising is that these worker ants are not born with the necessary skills already pre-programmed in their DNA to do some of these specialized works. For them to have these skills they do what we humans do, learn it from someone who knows how things are done. The teacher ants “teaching style” is called tandem-running where the teacher ant will teach a younger ant the ropes by running with it. This kind of teaching, even more surprisingly, involves a two way interaction between teacher and student; the first in a non-human animal. And if a student is a slow learner and fails in its “exams” it will be relegated to some other job that does not require specialized skills.

5. They Know How Agriculture Works

Among all living beings, we now of only four that are developed enough to use agriculture as a means of survival: bark beetles, termites, humans, and ants. However, between ants and us, it seems they started farming first, having been at it since 50 million years ago. Before moving out of her birth nest, a young queen must first sneak inside the garden and take away some fungal pellets. These pellets will be the “seedlings” that she needs to start her own garden and feed her brood.

Ants (of the Attini tribe) do their farming by cultivating fungi, just like humans do in farming crops; they even use pesticides to combat parasites that affects their “crops.” There are five known systems of agriculture that ants practice, but all ants that practice agriculture are shown to share some general habits in fungal gardening. This may suggest that ants are e-mailing their fellow garden buddies for some gardening tips.

4. They Use Herbicides And Disinfectant

Speaking of pesticides, ants use them, as well as herbicides, in their fungal gardens. Theirs is far more eco-friendly than ours, however. The fungal gardens that ants grow are also home to a virulent kind of fungus that kills the fungal crops. To prevent this fungal weed from spreading, the ants have a bacteria at their disposal that they carry around on their cuticles. This bacteria produces an antibiotic that specifically suppresses the growth of the fungal weed.

In their nests, they use several substances that inhibit the spread of parasites or weeds. The wood ants, for example, add solidified conifer resins to their nests while building them, which hinders the growth of bacteria and fungi. The lemon ant, which prefers to nest in trees, produces a natural herbicide that kills all other plant life surrounding their nesting tree, including grown trees. They do this by injecting leaves with herbicide, and the plants will start to die within hours.

3. They Raise Livestock

Ants do not only raise crops, but also livestock, which they use for “milking.” The livestock consists of insects (like aphids, mealybugs, and myrmecophilous caterpillars) that secrete a sweet liquid called honeydew. The ants keep the predators away from their livestock, and even herd them from one feeding location to another, just like what we do with cows. When it is time to collect some honeydew from the livestock, the ants “milk” them, by tapping them with their antennae. The ants even bring their precious livestock with them when they migrate to a new area. Kind of reminds us of frontiersmen bringing their cattle along while in search of greener pastures.

2. They Wage Wars

Imagine the scene in the final battle of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: total carnage wherever you look, with the battle lines blurred out as the warring parties are jumbled up in the heat of battle, with groups of soldiers clustering together to form a cohesive front and take out an enemy at a time. Now imagine, instead of the handsome unsullied face of Legolas and his crew, you get ants with menacing mandibles and scary big eyes of doom. The tactics ants use in warfare are eerily similar to human war strategies, and they even vary their tactics depending on what is at stake. They can even use “propaganda pheromones” to confuse enemy ants and, make them fight among themselves.

There are even species of ants, like the amazon ants, that oddly resemble the fabled Spartans in their way of life. Namely, they only survive through waging wars to replenish their slaves, and to get more resources from other colonies. They even act like medieval knights when in their nests, doing nothing more than demanding food from their slaves, and burnishing their chittenous armour.

And yes, when we said slavery, we meant it…

1. They Practice Slavery

As a whole, ants are known for being hard workers but, just like humans, there are some rotten apples in their baskets. There are several species of ants that are dependent for slave labour for survival, and who will actively wage war against other colonies to steal the pupae and enslave them upon hatching.

The most rotten apple in the basket is a species of ants called Polyergus breviceps, which interestingly, is endemic in the United States. This species of ants have lost their ability to take care of their young and even themselves. They “do not forage for food, feed the young or the queen, or even clean up their own nest.” This kind of behaviour would mean certain extinction for most species, but these ants have a super weapon up their sleeve - weapons of mass subjugation. The warrior ants will attack a nest, and release a formic acid against the defenders. This will trigger panic among their ranks and crumble their defense, making it a breeze to steal the pupae.

If that is not enough, they have a more formidable weapon - their queen. The queen of Polyergus breviceps is capable of releasing pheromones that will reduce the aggression of the defending ants, making them easy for conquest. In some instances, when the ants badly need more slaves, the queen will go out with the warriors to war. After releasing her pheromones to crush the aggression of the defenders, she will immediately look for the queen of the overtaken nest and kill her. When the deed is done, the invader queen will become the new queen of the invaded nest, and the defenders all bow down to her and address her as “her majesty the queen.”

Everything is not lost for the slaves though; every so often they stage rebellions against their masters, by ripping apart the larvae of those that enslaved them. This means the slaver ants have less chance of going out and conquering more, as their numbers are quickly dwindling. Thus saving other ants from slavery, one baby ant at a time.

Top image: Macro shot of two ants. Credit: ©Irina/OneBigPhoto.com.

[Source: Toptenz. Edited. Top image added.]

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