72 replies to this topic

[AntsCanada]

Honestly, I do think reporting him to the Goverment is a bit much for one colony, now that I've sat and thought about it. However, I still think he should be held accountable for it. I'm more worried about the people he rubbed off on all around the globe. I do respect, and accept his apology. We'll just see what the future has in store.

 

These ants have become as native in Manila as the 3 inch roaches, cat-sized rats, and omnipresent geckos that frequent every corner of the city that even if this was reported to DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) here in the Philippines, they would laugh at you. Let me report myself. I will show them the video and this thread. Just a reminder of the details for those who didn't completely read my post, I held them for a few weeks in containers and let them go again. BOTTOM LINE: I will NOT kill ants, and I don't care if they are just 52 little ants (known to cause destruction in other more delicate parts of the world) in a test tube. Here they have established and have naturalized, not like Solenopsis invicta but more like Tetramorium immigrans in North America.

 

PS - I get why theoretically it would seem like such a sin if you haven't lived here in Manila. I explained all details above in my video series and explained in the hidden video of the actual release that one should not release ants that were not caught from your area. Why I am still coming back here, I'm not sure. So busy but needed to chat about ants! LOL! Thanks for those who support me on the matter.

Edited by AntsCanada, January 20 2018 - 6:47 PM.

[T.C.]

@AntsCanada, most people just care about the impact releasing ants will have on those regions like mine where it's a clean, healthily balanced, ecosystem. Alot of people will now think it's ok to release ants everywhere. I think we can all agree your ants won't cause harm based off where they were released.

Edited by T.C., January 20 2018 - 7:01 PM.

[Martialis]

deleted

Edited by Martialis, May 9 2019 - 3:26 PM.

[Batspiderfish]

The kids who follow your channel hold you in very high regard, and if they hear that it's perfectly OK to release their pets when they can no longer take care of them, then it's going to cause problems. We have seen that other released pets (even if they were captured locally) can spread diseases which wild populations would otherwise not face significant exposure to. You could have asked your biology associates if releasing your pet ants were the proper course of action, but you instead asked your YouTube audience, a demographic composed mostly of youngsters and folks only just beginning to learn about ants. A lot of people are hung up on the fact that the pharaoh ants are a non-native species, but the true issue is the influence of that episode on your impressionable audience. You operate a program for finding local hobbyists with which to safely trade ants; that would have been a much more sensible solution for your Monomorium than killing them or putting them back in the wild or just holding onto them and trying to fix the problem.

You have really done so much for the ant-keeping hobby, and revived my love of ants many years ago. I thank you for inspiring me and so many others. But, it's frankly been a very long time since you've been able to participate in the community, transient even on your own forum; I appreciate that you are eclectic, with many aspirations and lots of spirit. I am sad that your only interactions must be invested in defending yourself.

Some of the more senior ant-keepers will remember Antdude's Yuku forum, a moderator whose policies seemed unbearable to so many people and yet was able to attract and sustain the attention of entomologists like James Trager, Alex Wild, Alfred Buschinger, Gordon Snelling (thank you for sticking with us), and others that I am surely forgetting. Most of the non-doctorate contributers to the hobby were raised in an environment nurtured by scientists. The community we have today is emotional and anecdotal, with people desperate for guidance on the basis of convention. I fear that if enough hobbyists normalize the behavior that you advocate for without any concern nor understanding of the consequences, then the effects will be irreversible and that elements of the hobby itself may become a target of environmental policy.

When it comes down to it, I believe we have a duty to our pets: to take the best care of them for the rest of their lives.

Edited by Batspiderfish, January 20 2018 - 9:03 PM.

[Lazarus]

Well said Batspiderfish.

For the record, I am an AC fan and my interest in the hobby started primarily from watching Mikey's videos. I found them highly informative if over dramatic at times. That said, he does have a great influence on newcomers to the hobby, especially kids. Given his reasons and logic for the release, he really should have gone and explained the dangers of releasing those ants. I will give him credit for stating the dangers of releasing ants in the past in some of his other videos, but he should not assume that those watching that video already know.

As many of his followers do watch his videos from week to week I was hoping that he would at least clarify the situation with his latest video released yesterday. Sadly he did not.

[RayBuc]

I agree @Lazarus you said just about what i was about to post. It is very sad that Mikey Bustos refuses to take responsibility of the impact that he has on the ant keeping community. And potentially the ecosystem as a whole.

[Ants_Texas]

 

Honestly, I do think reporting him to the Goverment is a bit much for one colony, now that I've sat and thought about it. However, I still think he should be held accountable for it. I'm more worried about the people he rubbed off on all around the globe. I do respect, and accept his apology. We'll just see what the future has in store.

 

These ants have become as native in Manila as the 3 inch roaches, cat-sized rats, and omnipresent geckos that frequent every corner of the city that even if this was reported to DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) here in the Philippines, they would laugh at you. Let me report myself. I will show them the video and this thread. Just a reminder of the details for those who didn't completely read my post, I held them for a few weeks in containers and let them go again. BOTTOM LINE: I will NOT kill ants, and I don't care if they are just 52 little ants (known to cause destruction in other more delicate parts of the world) in a test tube. Here they have established and have naturalized, not like Solenopsis invicta but more like Tetramorium immigrans in North America.

 

PS - I get why theoretically it would seem like such a sin if you haven't lived here in Manila. I explained all details above in my video series and explained in the hidden video of the actual release that one should not release ants that were not caught from your area. Why I am still coming back here, I'm not sure. So busy but needed to chat about ants! LOL! Thanks for those who support me on the matter.

 

Mikey, I completely understand that these ants are everywhere in the Phillipines. And I also agree that a small colony with 52 workers won't do much, but it doesn't help at all. What you need to understand is that most people are just upset about you recording it. Many antkeepers or soon to be antkeepers have been shown that releasing invasive ants is completely fine. Your area may be beyond help, but this will not help the Southern United States at all.

[KBant]

y'all need to chill. 

 

i once caught a tonnnn of argentine ants including many queens from my backyard when i was a wee boy first interested in ants. 

 

guess where i tossed these suuuper invasive species after i realized i couldn't care for them, in my backyard. i wasn't fanning the invasive species flame by doing what i did, throwing them away vs killing them was neither here nor there, its negligible. 

Edited by KBant, January 22 2018 - 9:27 AM.

[Martialis]

Deleted

Edited by Martialis, February 9 2018 - 7:40 PM.

[KBant]

he released pharaoh ants aka Monomorium pharaonis not yellow crazy ants as the link suggests. lol who writes this stuff..

[Jadeninja9]

Interesting

Edited by Jadeninja9, February 9 2018 - 12:44 AM.

[Serafine]

i once caught a tonnnn of argentine ants including many queens from my backyard when i was a wee boy first interested in ants. 
 
guess where i tossed these suuuper invasive species after i realized i couldn't care for them, in my backyard. i wasn't fanning the invasive species flame by doing what i did, throwing them away vs killing them was neither here nor there, its negligible.

There are two major differences you didn't consider though:

- You never claimed to be on a moral high ground in the first place, you never made a video artificially dividing the antkeeping community in "team native" (which are supposed to be the good guys) and "team exotic" (which are supposed to be the irresponsible bad Disney villians).
- You never published a video of you doing it on a channel that has a massive audience of mostly younger people, effectively telling half a million kids that it is totally okay to dump a colony of invasive, mite-infested ants on a local garbage dump - and don't tell me you seriously expect 12 year old kids to differentiate between naturalized invaders, invaders that have overrun the place beyond hopelessness and invaders that are relatively new to a place but very capable and ready to butcher the native species they come into contact with.

 

The main point which is CONSTANTLY IGNORED by everyone telling people to "chill down" or " oh, it's not so bad, they're everywhere anyway" is that the point of this whole mess of a discussion is not that there is a video that shows how a colony of mite-infested invasive ants are dumped onto a local garbage dump, the point is that it is shown on a channel watched by kids worldwide who don't know better and might replicate the behavior shown with ant species that clearly should NOT be released in areas where they live.

And that's not even including the issue of potentially harmful exotic mites that could be deployed into a local ecosystem where they can infect local ant species which have no defenses against them because they never had to deal with these mites before. Those mites shown in the video might have been harmless but not every kind of mite is like that, and you seriously don't expect kids to differentiate mite species (something even most entomologists have issues with) when most of them can barely ID the genus of the ants they caught.

 

The issue with this whole affair is not the act (of releasing a mite-infested invasive ant colony) itself but the way it was presented (you could even say the way it was displayed).

Edited by Serafine, February 9 2018 - 3:07 AM.

[Connectimyrmex]

 

i once caught a tonnnn of argentine ants including many queens from my backyard when i was a wee boy first interested in ants. 
 
guess where i tossed these suuuper invasive species after i realized i couldn't care for them, in my backyard. i wasn't fanning the invasive species flame by doing what i did, throwing them away vs killing them was neither here nor there, its negligible.

There are two major differences you didn't consider though:

- You never claimed to be on a moral high ground in the first place, you never made a video artificially dividing the antkeeping community in "team native" (which are supposed to be the good guys) and "team exotic" (which are supposed to be the irresponsible bad Disney villians).
- You never published a video of you doing it on a channel that has a massive audience of mostly younger people, effectively telling half a million kids that it is totally okay to dump a colony of invasive, mite-infested ants on a local garbage dump - and don't tell me you seriously expect 12 year old kids to differentiate between naturalized invaders, invaders that have overrun the place beyond hopelessness and invaders that are relatively new to a place but very capable and ready to butcher the native species they come into contact with.

 

The main point which is CONSTANTLY IGNORED by everyone telling people to "chill down" or " oh, it's not so bad, they're everywhere anyway" is that the point of this whole mess of a discussion is not that there is a video that shows how a colony of mite-infested invasive ants are dumped onto a local garbage dump, the point is that it is shown on a channel watched by kids worldwide who don't know better and might replicate the behavior shown with ant species that clearly should NOT be released in areas where they live.

And that's not even including the issue of potentially harmful exotic mites that could be deployed into a local ecosystem where they can infect local ant species which have no defenses against them because they never had to deal with these mites before. Those mites shown in the video might have been harmless but not every kind of mite is like that, and you seriously don't expect kids to differentiate mite species (something even most entomologists have issues with) when most of them can barely ID the genus of the ants they caught.

 

The issue with this whole affair is not the act (of releasing a mite-infested invasive ant colony) itself but the way it was presented (you could even say the way it was displayed).

 

 

 

The kids who follow your channel hold you in very high regard, and if they hear that it's perfectly OK to release their pets when they can no longer take care of them, then it's going to cause problems. We have seen that other released pets (even if they were captured locally) can spread diseases which wild populations would otherwise not face significant exposure to. You could have asked your biology associates if releasing your pet ants were the proper course of action, but you instead asked your YouTube audience, a demographic composed mostly of youngsters and folks only just beginning to learn about ants. A lot of people are hung up on the fact that the pharaoh ants are a non-native species, but the true issue is the influence of that episode on your impressionable audience. You operate a program for finding local hobbyists with which to safely trade ants; that would have been a much more sensible solution for your Monomorium than killing them or putting them back in the wild or just holding onto them and trying to fix the problem.

You have really done so much for the ant-keeping hobby, and revived my love of ants many years ago. I thank you for inspiring me and so many others. But, it's frankly been a very long time since you've been able to participate in the community, transient even on your own forum; I appreciate that you are eclectic, with many aspirations and lots of spirit. I am sad that your only interactions must be invested in defending yourself.

Some of the more senior ant-keepers will remember Antdude's Yuku forum, a moderator whose policies seemed unbearable to so many people and yet was able to attract and sustain the attention of entomologists like James Trager, Alex Wild, Alfred Buschinger, Gordon Snelling (thank you for sticking with us), and others that I am surely forgetting. Most of the non-doctorate contributers to the hobby were raised in an environment nurtured by scientists. The community we have today is emotional and anecdotal, with people desperate for guidance on the basis of convention. I fear that if enough hobbyists normalize the behavior that you advocate for without any concern nor understanding of the consequences, then the effects will be irreversible and that elements of the hobby itself may become a target of environmental policy.

When it comes down to it, I believe we have a duty to our pets: to take the best care of them for the rest of their lives.

 

 

Yep, you said it guys