Don’t use flash, don’t magnify digitally and just leave the zooming to us…and hey, you could make it a small video/gif to avoid the issue wt their movement 
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A big raccoon came by a friend’s house where we were visiting last night… It just sat there and ate the whole bowl of cat food before leaving…
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I don’t use the flash at all with ants (it really throws off their colors).
If I knew how to turn it into a small gif I would.
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Take a video and either use one of the various vid to gif converters online or get an app for your phone (esp. handy if you use it to record the vid in the first place ofc).
Otherwise am quite sure @delenn13 has some free software for that on her hands.
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Your wish is my command…
https://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-animated-gif-maker.htm
I swear by Giz. So you should be able to find something here.
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okay, here, as requested is a photo of:
My room… a nice little climate controlled space.
The Housing tray, the white residue on the sides is dried fluon (a liquid Teflon lubricant) which I apply in order to prevent ants from crawling out of the trays.
These are Pheidole obscurothorax ants, crowding around a food test tube. The ones with wings are alates (unmated queens).
This is a hopefully clearer shot of the Dorymyrmex ants, unfortunately I can’t get a good shoot of the brood right now, so most of the alates are not visible in the photos.
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They look vicious, with their big sharp pointy teeth…
Now if only they were white and fluffy!
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Actually, they are pretty chill… Content to just sit there are keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Even when they are in ‘full attack mode’ they don’t hurt at all (although they have quite a grip).
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Thanks for the lab pics, these are way cooler than you made it sound, rly anything but disappointment here!
The queens you got there have some huge mandibles (?), am kinda curious how much they hurt hehe
Very interesting setup and way better quality images 
Everybody here always tells me how much ant bites hurt and I have gotten bitten so often and much by them, I barely feel it anymore xD
They are fun to watch…when they clean themselves it looks like they are “grooming” their feelers 
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various pics of ants
makes me wonder if (some/all) X/Y/Z"ists" sometimes get recurrent nightmares about their study subjects rising up and going against/devouring them
-i think if i handled even white fluffy bunnies or poodles all day i could easily get a couple of horrible dream scenarios involving those floofers and their tiny, sharp, teeth… 
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As mentioned above, there is no real pain…
It feels like you put a tiny alligator clip on your hand (a firm pinching sensation), it isn’t painful (there isn’t any real pulling of the skin) and honestly simply annoying that you can’t extract the ant.
I think you are looking at the majors, those ants with the really big heads? they are a specialized defensive caste. I don’t have a good shot of a queen I there. Standby and I will fix that tomorrow.
Actually, the bite isn’t what you have to worry about on most ants. Some ants (the non Formicinae) have a stinger, like the wasp, and that sting is typically where the pain of the encounter comes from. I too used to think I was immune to the ‘pain’ of ants since I only ever encountered Eastern Carpenters and other Formicinae ants… Then I got stung by a trapjaw and realized I was very, very wrong (felt exactly like a wasp sting, and was a sharp stinging pain with tenderness for a few minutes).
I can only speak for myself, but I haven’t had any negative dreams about ants… Probably because, despite negative experiences like above, I have so many memories of them falling over, and being unable to right themselves.
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Today I saw a quite big red ant (for around here)…the pic is unfortunately subpar 
Then this crazy beetle I’ve never seen before:
And this fat rose beetle fella had a crashlanding at home and I picked him up and waited for him to recover…shortly before lift off he decided to take a big, yellow piss on my hand
I swear these beetles are so fkn dumb, they ALWAYS crash land (I still adore them lol)
I want one here now lol sounds like a funny feeling
So a pure “guard ant”? How cool is that?? I was wondering where they supposedly had their wings xD
Looking forward to some sexy shots of the queen 
Am actually very, very sure that we have ants around here wt a (slightly) venomous bite, doesn’t hurt nearly as much as a wasp sting tho. Didn’t know that some actually do have a stinger, gotta watch out for that in the future 
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The ant looks blackish brown (just asking for clarification of the color as you describe it as reddish), and looks a bit like a carpenter ant (given the size and the dark color), but their is an odd flange on the thorax that makes me uncertain.
The beetle looks like a woodboring beetle, like a longhorned woodborer specifically, they tend to be nocturnal though so odd it shows up now.
May have been reflexing bleeding or defensive vomiting, beetles can do one or the other. They keep foul smelling fluid in their crop to deter predators.
Am fairly certain isn’t an ant then… Ant venom glands are in the abdomen…Also, mouthparts tend to be cutting/crushing not ‘injecting’ stuff.
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Yes, it’s a very dark red, blackish brown if you will. I’ll try to take a better pic if I get to see another one around here.
I wonder what made it show up midday then, it was in a quite calm place, there aren’t rly any obvious reasons like lots of dogs or kids who might disturb the wildlife.
Hm, it didn’t smell bad tho…and I handled it with great care, I don’t think that it felt like it was under attack…but maybe that’s it I never had that happen before wt them, but I was certainly surprised about how much fluid such a little bug could excrete.
I looked it up, it’s not venom but acid, but yes it’s an ant.
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Sooooooo… the Red wood ant, like all Formicines actually, has the ability to spray formic acid from its abdomen (the thing that makes them amazing is that they can do so at such range).
When an ant bites into an intruder or an enemy they often spray acid into the wound created by the bite. This is typically why people confuse the sting and the bite.
https://cisr.ucr.edu/images/red_imported_fire_ant_01.jpg
This is an example of the pose that ants may often take, although this is the unrelated red fire ant.
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Here’s an old school motorbike if anyone is interested…
This was a V8 driven vehicle, he went 137 miles per hour for a mile in 1907… 
Was at a local museum today, it is the Glen Curtiss museum…
And by the way, how would anyone find this a comfortable ride?
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Thread necromancy is in the air again, folks!
Not a great image, since I am about 15 feet / 5 meters (metres) away with my cell phone, trying to capture it quickly on camera before it flew away…
Bull frogs are out and making lots of funny noises again!
Some irises opened up yesterday and today too!
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Ok, first of all, my phone is a Nokia 3210. Still, I can look for a few pictures I made in some places.
Let me take an imaginary pause before clicking “reply” while I search for a couple to mimic having a conversation in person. […]
I’m back! Ok, so this is gonna start a little bit cheesy but, you asked to see my world and a very important part of it, if not the most important is my partner. This is a photo I made for some little text for the university along the lines of sustainability, nature, progress, you know, hippy stuff. She happens to study in the biomedical field and have diabetes type 1, that photo is in an old abandoned orchard right before a hospital decently equiped for investigation. I didn’t have a lot of time and despise my love for art, I’m not really good creating it, if anything maybe literature would be my not-so-shameless try (in my mother tongue, obviously, in english I can’t even understand Shakespeare properly).
This one is one extremely big organ in a rather big church in a small city at the east of Spain. It’s hard to capture the charm of it, since it really feels the building.
This castle is called “La Alcazaba” and it’s one of many remains of the muslim architecture in Spain, actually placed in Málaga, south of Spain. The part I really like about this side is that no one ever shows it as an example of it (and for a reason) because the front of it it’s really impressive, full of green and beautiful, but the fact this was constructed side by side to a roman theatre wich was used until not so long ago always has been a plus for me. Also, there’s a little cinema near by where they pick quite good and strange films and people playing music so, it makes a quite nice place. I will put a photo of the front part to make you understand. Part of the charm of this photo is nearly impossible to make such an “empty” capture, no matter the hour of the day.
This place, as watery as may look, used to be filled with ton of cats, who sleeped in the rocks like iguanas. Sadly, the mayor decided to start getting rid of them even being a good thing for tourists and never being aggresive. Now there’s more problems with insects and rats in the area (full of restaurants) and the city hall will wonder why. Still, sometimes water in this area turns silver with the reflection of the sun over a huge surface like in the second one, not made by me.
Well, I think that’s enough. Also, I happen to have most of photos in either paper, the other semi-dead computer or lost in time.
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I love old fortifications and castle towns, I have a few in my vicinity as well though not quite as large and obvious as the one you’ve posted here. The place looks amazing but way too warm.
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Oh Fraggles, you’re in fact right. The place is too warm. Just not for me! I’m a sun lover to the end of the days. I can be at 40 degrees and thinking “Hell yeah, this is good weather”. I can’t stand cold though, less than 5 degrees and I start shaking and asking why God has left me.
Probably because I’m an atheist, we will never know
Spain has some very cool castles, no way near as much as the United Kindom but still a good number. One of my favourites is “La Alhambra” in Granada, south as well.
These photos are not mine but I’m sure you will like them.
PD: One cool thing about the Alhambra is there is a castle and then a royal palace, less focused on militar defense. Also there’s a very nice example in Sevilla of a Cathedral wich was built and destroyed several times by catholics and muslims alike, demolishing, building and using parts of it.
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