Attack of the hairy crazy ants: The two-millimeter pests crawling through America





They are tiny, destructive and they bite - so whatever you do don't ant-agonise them.

A plague of pesky little alien invaders are causing mayhem as they spread across America .

Unleashing antisocial behaviour wherever they go, hairy crazy ants - sometimes known as raspberry crazy ants - have now made it to the southern state of Louisiana .

Antisocial: The hairy crazy ant is just 2mm long but is wreaking havoc across America

The 2mm-long reddish-brown pests are believed to have originally made it to U.S. shores on boats from the Caribbean before crawling from Texas and Mississippi.



They get their name because they are covered with little spikes and run around in little circles - as if they're mad.

And experts at the Louisiana State University's Agricultural Center are so worried they have warned residents that the ants are on the attack.

It follows the discovery of a colony at a home in Sulphur, near Lake Charles.

LSU entomologist Dennis Ring says they can get inside electrical boxes and short them out and even find their way into computers, televisions or other electronics and damage them.

He added that residents shouldn't have trouble knowing if they have a problem.

Troublesome: An ant on a circuit board

Mr Ring explained: 'Your pet will not stay in the yard, you will not go in your yard because in a matter of minutes you will have hundreds of ants on you.'

Zack Lemann, spokesman for the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans , said the ants gather in the thousands, bite people and overwhelm other ant populations in the area, either killing them or forcing them to leave.

He added: 'They make their nests in inconvenient places, their colonies can be extremely large, they do bite humans and often they do not respond well to control methods used on other ant species.'

THE CRAZY ANT JOURNEY ACROSS AMERICA

Hairy crazy ants have lived in Florida since the 1950s, but didn't start spreading until 2000. In 2002 they reached Houston, Texas and by 2009 they had reached the Mississippi coast. Last year the Mississippi Entomological Association reported that the first confirmed case in Mississippi was a mind-boggling infestation with a huge number of different nests and queens. The ants had nested in rotting wood, soil, debris and in structures as well as in cars, a motor home, a motorcycle and electrical boxes. Their habit of nesting in electrical boxes has caused electrical shorts and other problems elsewhere. The report said: 'Repeated applications of various pesticides had no obvious effect on the large masses of ants present, with new colonies replacing those that were killed within days or hours. 'Aggressive control measures and monitoring might be necessary to stem its movement.' If you spot any crazy dancing ants in your home, you can submit samples to the Louisiana State Arthropod Museum for identification. Visit the museum's website, www.lsuinsects.org for information.







AgCenter scientist Victoria Bayless said: 'In 2009, the ant was collected on the Mississippi coast.

'And since that time, entomologists have been expecting the hairy crazy ant to invade Louisiana from either the Texas population or the Mississippi population.'

