Crazy ants are invading parts of the U.S., including Houston 
 
 
 
 
 
 Photo: Courtesy Texas AgriLife Extension Image 1 of / 2 Caption Close Image 1 of 2 Rasberry crazy ant Rasberry crazy ant Photo: Courtesy Texas AgriLife Extension Image 2 of 2 A group of crazy Rasberry ants at the Sam Houston State University's Institute for the Study of Invasive Species Wednesday, May 1, 2013, in Huntsville. A group of crazy Rasberry ants at the Sam Houston State University's Institute for the Study of Invasive Species Wednesday, May 1, 2013, in Huntsville. Photo: James Nielsen, Houston Chronicle Crazy ants are invading parts of the U.S., including Houston 1 / 2 Back to Gallery 
 
 According to researchers at The University of Texas at Austin, invasive "crazy ants" are slowly displacing fire ants in the southeastern United States. These "Tawny Crazy Ants" have a peculiar predilection toward electronics as well. 
 
 "They nest in electronics and create short circuits, as they create a contact bridge between two points when they get electrocuted they release an alarm pheromone," says UT research assistant Edward LeBrun. 
 
 "The other ants are attracted to the chemicals that other ants give off," he adds. At this point, more ants arrive and create a larger nest. 
 
 These crazy ants do not sting like fire ants. They will bite, but you will not feel it like you would a fire ant sting. Those bites are a hallmark of growing up in Texas. 
 
 The tiny invaders have become quite common in the Houston area, first discovered in 2002 by pest control worker Tom Rasberry. He alerted Texas A&M scientists of his discovery. 
 
 At one point they were called "Raspberry Crazy Ants" after the pest fighter. The scientific name is Nylanderia fulva, which doesn't quite have the ring of "crazy ants." 
 
 
 
 The ants should be contained where you find them and then exterminated. They thrive on human movement. 
 
 "You shouldn't move them around. They nest in anything, boxes, potted plants," says LeBrun. As the ants travel, they disrupt other ant populations. Their colonies survive, unlike fire ants. 
 
 LeBrun adds that there is not much you can do other than call pest control if you have crazy ants. You need chemicals that are not commonly found at the hardware store. 
 
 The ants do not consume most of the poison baits that kill fire ant mounds, and there is no other ant population that keeps their numbers in check. 

 'Crazy ants' from South America are hitching rides across the South, setting up massive colonies, and relieving other occupying ant armies, including fire ants, of their duties. 
 
 Hairy 'crazy ants' are on the move in Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The flea-sized critters are called crazy because each ant in the horde seems to scramble randomly, moving so fast that videos look as if they're on fast forward. 
 
 The South is being invaded – again. This time it’s erratic but troublesome “crazy ants” from South America marching – actually, hitching rides – across the South, setting up massive colonies, and relieving other occupying ant armies, including fire ants, of their duties. 
 
 With billions of ants possible per acre, crazy ants, known for their random, jerky travel, eat or chase away most other insects and reptiles, and hound yard pets inside. In single numbers pretty innocuous-looking, tiny tawny crazy ants also make pests out of themselves by sometimes biting people and shorting out home electrical wiring. 
 
 The question now is if there’s room enough in the South for the newcomers, or whether the United States needs to invest in research to figure out how to stop the “tawny crazy ant,” as well as its cousins, the “black crazy ant,” and the “Caribbean crazy ant,” before they’re ubiquitous. 
 
 “The entire Gulf Coast is going to be inundated in a very short period of time,” entomologist Tom Rasberry, who found and identified the crazy ants in 2002, recently told a local CBS News broadcast. 
 
 Having already spread in the span of a decade from a bunch of counties surrounding Houston to as far away as Florida, crazy ant success so far is entirely due to their hitchhiking skills. A few ants clambering aboard at a truck stop in Waco, Texas, may soon find themselves starting a colony in Covington, Georgia. They thrive best in warmer, moister locales, which means the South is stuck with them. 
 
 But as with most invasive species, “crazy ants” can have unexpected, sometimes paradoxical, impacts on their conquered ground. Fire ants, which were accidentally introduced in the 1930s and now pretty much own the South, apparently can’t stand “crazy ants,” and retreat from the conquering horde, as do most other ant species. 
 
 And despite oftentimes legitimate cries of concern from the scientific community about the dangers of invasive plants and animals in the US, many one-time strangers-to-these-parts – kudzu, snakeheads, boas, Yankees – become, at least in the eyes of some Southerners, manageable pests, part of an ever-changing backdrop of wildlife at the door. 
 
 This being the South, even scientists have sought out biblical insights into how to view the invasion, including this from Proverbs 6:6-8 cited in a Texas A&M research paper about invasive ants: “Go to the ant, O sluggard/ Observe her ways and be wise/ It has no commander/ No overseer or ruler.” 

 Story highlights "Tawny crazy ants'" could change ecological balances 
 
 Crazy ants likely to overwhelm fire ants and "whack" them, researcher says 
 
 Species originated in South America 
 
 Crazy ants hitchhike with humans to spread 
 
 Beware the "crazy ants." 
 
 Researchers at the University of Texas are warning that the invasive species from South America has the potential to change the ecological balance in the southeastern United States, largely because the ants can wipe out colonies of what's been widely considered the insect villain of the region, the fire ant. 
 
 The crazy ants, officially called "Tawny crazy ants," are omnivores that can take over an area by both killing what's there and starving out what they don't kill, said Ed LeBrun, a research associate with the Texas invasive species research program at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory in the College of Natural Sciences. 
 
 "Perhaps the biggest deal is the displacement of the fire ant, which is the 300-pound gorilla in Texas ecosystems these days," LeBrun said in a press release. "The whole system has changed around fire ants. Things that can't tolerate fire ants are gone. Many that can have flourished. New things have come in. Now we are going to go through and whack the fire ants and put something in its place that has a very different biology. There are going to be a lot of changes that come from that." 
 
 Beyond the troubles they cause for the environment, the crazy ants can be a big headache for people because their populations are so dense, LeBrun said. 
 
 The crazy ants nest in walls, crawl spaces, house plants or empty containers in the yard, researchers said. 
 
 "They don't sting like fire ants do, but aside from that they are much bigger pests," he said. "There are videos on YouTube of people sweeping out dustpans full of these ants from their bathroom. You have to call pest control operators every three or four months just to keep the infestation under control. It's very expensive." 
 
 The crazy ants are going so crazy, in fact, that some people want their fire ants back, LeBrun said. 
 
 "Fire ants are in many ways very polite. They live in your yard. They form mounds and stay there, and they only interact with you if you step on their mound," he said. 
 
 Scientists are unsure how far the ants, which are native to Argentina and Brazil, may spread in the U.S. Since being first seen in Houston in 2002, they've been found mostly in wetter environments with mild winters in parts of Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. 
 
 And while they can quickly overwhelm a small area, the reproductive members of the species don't fly, so to move over large distances, they have to hitchhike -- in your stuff. 
 
 "If people living in or visiting invaded areas are careful and check for the crazy ants when moving or going on longer trips, they could have a huge impact on the spread," LeBrun said.
– Rat-sized snails, red-eyed cicadas, and now ... crazy ants. That is the latest insect invasion to hit the US, with billions marching in from South America and setting up colonies in the South, the Christian Science Monitor reports. "The entire Gulf Coast is going to be inundated in a very short period of time," says the entomologist who discovered the species here in 2002; the ants have in the last decade spread from Houston to Florida. Crazy ants—apparently so dubbed for what the Monitor calls "their random, jerky travel"—pose two big problems: Firstly, they may upset the ecological balance in southeastern states by driving away fire ants. "They don't sting like fire ants do, but aside from that they are much bigger pests," says a researcher, CNN reports. Secondly, they love nesting in electronics, creating short circuits and ruining your gadgets, reports the Houston Chronicle.