28 replies to this topic

[bixbyte]

I recently had some picnic ants appear in my kitchen.
There is this spoon I use for measuring my RES daily doses.
This spoon has never been cleaned over the years.
It is coated solid with pure white Resveratrol powder.
To my surprise, these picnic ants were going after the RES.
You should have seen them jumping.
When I tried to kill one with a paper towel the ant would literally jump away a couple of inches.
You should have seen how fast they can run on RES.
Has anyone ever seen or tested picnic ants on RES?
I don't know why, ants appear to become super charged on RES.
I know this all might sound silly, but I am serious.

[Doc Eight or DE]

I recently had some picnic ants appear in my kitchen.
There is this spoon I use for measuring my RES daily doses.
This spoon has never been cleaned over the years.
It is coated solid with pure white Resveratrol powder.
To my surprise, these picnic ants were going after the RES.
You should have seen them jumping.
When I tried to kill one with a paper towel the ant would literally jump away a couple of inches.
You should have seen how fast they can run on RES.
Has anyone ever seen or tested picnic ants on RES?
I don't know why, ants appear to become super charged on RES.
I know this all might sound silly, but I am serious.

Did you eat any of the ants, to test for T_res?

[bixbyte]

Did you eat any of the ants, to test for T_res?

I know you are making a joke.
But, what my wife found unusual was the ants did not go after the crumbs in the toaster immediately next to the spoon that I use for RES.
The Ants went right after the RES.
You should have seen them jumping.
I mean like inches and fast enough to avoid me smashing them.
Someone should test ants on RES.
I wonder if the effects on Ants on RES are similar to humans?
They appear to turn into "super" ants.

[unglued]

The usual caution is in order here: Ants are not people. Just because your ants can lift 50 times their own weight after eating 10000mg/kg of resveratrol doesn't mean it will work on humans. Wait for the human studies. When the human subjects jump ten times their body length, I'll believe it.

But seriously, it sounds like an experiment a professional scientist or student or even amateur could perform in a controlled way without much of a lab. They would need to start with a fresh colony and feed half of them resveratrol and have of them something more ordinary. In case it depends on the type of ant, you would need to report what species you saw this in, not by their common local name but by an internationally standardized name, the Latin one. Do you think that it affected adult ants within hours after consuming the stuff? Or could they have been fed it back when they were larvae, so that it affected their development? A quick Google search suggests that would have been as little as six weeks before. Maybe two genetically identical colonies, in that case.

As for the question of what the ants were attracted to, there's a hole in your report big enough to drive an ant through: where were you buying pure white resveratrol powder years ago?

There is this spoon I use for measuring my RES daily doses.
This spoon has never been cleaned over the years.
It is coated solid with pure white Resveratrol powder.

the ants did not go after the crumbs in the toaster immediately next to the spoon that I use for RES.
The Ants went right after the RES.

Can you be sure they were going after the 98% resveratrol and not the two-year-old 50% resveratrol with other plant impurities in the innermost layer?

[Brainbox]

This spoon has never been cleaned over the years.

The ants probably experienced uncontrolled muscle contractions due to stomach cramps

[bixbyte]

The ants probably experienced uncontrolled muscle contractions due to stomach cramps

Guess What? Ants do not Jump!
I googled jumping ants.
http://www.google.co...j...;oq=&aqi=g4


True, This was not a controlled study.
But, the ants were jumping when I or my wife attempted to smash them.
I have never seen ants jump so far and fast.
Actually they were too fast for ordinary ants.
They were definately feeding on 98% RES.
I have used these two spoons for making my two daily RES doses for at least 2 or 3 years.
The spoons are coated in pure white 98% RES powder. (these spoons have never been washed)

Probably very easy to buy two ant farms and feed one group 98-99% RES and the other a Placebo.
Now, how does one test them?
Sounds hard to create a test for ants.
Let them know you are going to smash them and see if they can jump.

Edited by bixbyte, 15 July 2009 - 09:05 PM.

[unglued]

Probably very easy to buy two ant farms and feed one group 98-99% RES and the other a Placebo.

Good idea. If it works on the ant farm ants, you'll know what species you got, so it will be a repeatable experiment. With the ones in your kitchen, I suppose you'd have to send it to an agricultural university to get it identified. Or maybe post a picture on some board where ant experts will see it, if you have a 1200dpi scanner or a camera with a macro lens.

I wonder what kind of placebo would fool an ant?

Remember that the fresh powder, if it's good quality, is almost entirely trans-resveratrol, whereas most of the stuff on your spoon would presumably have been converted to cis-resveratrol by years of exposure to UV and maybe oxygen.

Now, how does one test them?
Sounds hard to create a test for ants.
Let them know you are going to smash them and see if they can jump.

An academic scientist would probably take this approach: Stake a graduate student to each anthill, leaving one arm free to swat at them, and see which ants are more successful at avoiding getting swatted. Or at least have their grad students try a variety of poking techniques until they find the one that best provokes the ants to jump without the student getting bitten more than necessary.

Guess What? Ants do not Jump!
I googled jumping ants.
http://www.google.co...j...;oq=&aqi=g4

Huh? A glance at the search results shows that that some ants do jump:

• Jerdon's jumping ant (Harpegnathos saltator)
• Jumper Ant - Myrmecia nigrocincta
• Trap-jaw ants
• Myrmarachne melanotarsa, an ant-like jumping spider

But I gather than your ants don't resemble any of those, and resemble other ants you've got experience with that don't move anything like this.

Edited by unglued, 15 July 2009 - 09:52 PM.

[Anthony_Loera]

Do you have a digital camera? Maybe some photos may help identify these little guys.

A

[John Schloendorn]

You don't need a placebo control, but you do need a control. Just put them in identical boxes, one with resveratrol, one with bread crumbs. Do identical things to them, take a movie of each :-)

[maxwatt]

Be sure you don't get fire ants. The sting like hell when they byte, bix!

[bixbyte]

Be sure you don't get fire ants. The sting like hell when they byte, bix!

My wife cleaned up my RES trail and killed all the picnic ants today.
She does not like jumping ants, two of them actually jumped on her.
Ants seem to be aggressive on RES.
I have my digital camera ready.
Give me a couple days to see if more tiny ants show up.
Then I will let them feed on RES and take their photos.
Sounds silly, and you guys are putting me up to this!
Why don't you feed some ants RES and see them jump for yourself?
My wife just apologized for killing the ants on RES.
She said she didn't know.
What lesson will we learn if ants can jump on RES?
Equal to a human megadosing?
Sounds slapstick to me.

[malbecman]

My haiku:

Ants munching t-res,
Watch them run, jumping so high
Quick, get us a pic!

[Brainbox]

Better still, a movie.

[malbecman]

Too many syllables. ;-)

I could make the last line, "Get us a movie!"

Better still, a movie.

[maxwatt]

Wild ants on my patio will receive supplementation when the rain stops.

By "picnic ants" do you meanthe tiny ones, 2 mm in length, or the big ones nearly a cm long?

[bixbyte]

<br>

This photo is an extreme blowup.
I caught one ant inserted into a specimen bottle with RES.
ANT Measures under 3 MM long.
Maybe I gave him/her too much RES.
Found my ant deceased after 24 hours?
Now, I will try catch another one of these pests I mean ants and test again.
http://pages.prodigy...bixbite/ant.jpg

Wild ants on my patio will receive supplementation when the rain stops.

By "picnic ants" do you meanthe tiny ones, 2 mm in length, or the big ones nearly a cm long?

[unglued]

You don't need a placebo control, but you do need a control. Just put them in identical boxes, one with resveratrol, one with bread crumbs.

You would need to give bread crumbs as well as resveratrol to the test group. When they test how long mice live when fed resveratrol, they mix it in with their mouse chow. They don't feed them just a diet of resveratrol. And when your mutated ants take over the world and start experimenting on human subjects, it would be a mistake for them to feed the control group bread crusts and the test group pure resveratrol and then conclude that man cannot live on resveratrol alone.

[bixbyte]

You would need to give bread crumbs as well as resveratrol to the test group. When they test how long mice live when fed resveratrol, they mix it in with their mouse chow. They don't feed them just a diet of resveratrol. And when your mutated ants take over the world and start experimenting on human subjects, it would be a mistake for them to feed the control group bread crusts and the test group pure resveratrol and then conclude that man cannot live on resveratrol alone.

TRUE!
I make one lousy scientist.
Fed the ants pure RES and no food.
They go crazy, jump around and die.

[porthose]

My haiku:

Ants munching t-res,
Watch them run, jumping so high
Quick, get us a pic!

almost a haiku

a 'proper' haiku has a 3-5-3 format.

[maxwatt]

almost a haiku

a 'proper' haiku has a 3-5-3 format.

Traditional Haiku should include a seasonal reference, and consist of 17 on (syllables) in three metric phrases of 5-7-5 syllables.

[2tender]

Please guys, if you have any in mind, please post them.

[AgeVivo]

you could buy 2 ant farms (at 20$ each, at the Discovery Channel Store), put resveratrol in one (indicate where and which one) and not the other, start a video when you add a few ants in both of them. Try to get strange things and film them. Then we might be scientifically convinced

http://www.ecoshoppe...om-special-gel/
http://scientificson...hcd2=1248088382

Edited by AgeVivo, 20 July 2009 - 11:45 AM.

[unglued]

Traditional Haiku should include a seasonal reference, and consist of 17 on (syllables) in three metric phrases of 5-7-5 syllables.

With resveratrol,
Ants at a summer picnic
Have the advantage.

[2tender]

Great! Maxwatt, care to add one?

Edited by 2tender, 20 July 2009 - 11:42 PM.

[unglued]

or:

Coming this summer:
Ants eating elephant ears
Carry Hancock's curse!

(Hint: A lot of things are called elephant ears, but Google the other one.)

[luminous]

Ants on resveratrol...

[Brainbox]

It's a funny tread, so I moved it to "other conversations". If any science is re-introduced it could be moved back.

[2tender]

It's a funny tread, so I moved it to "other conversations". If any science is re-introduced it could be moved back.

True, the collective against cruelty to insects became enamored. Brainbox, is that a photo of Sartre as your avatar?

[AgeVivo]

Ants go nuts
Sun-dry mouldy Resv
Prove the link