1. You are responsible for any damages, deaths, actions, etc. from reading this forum. Use it at your own risk.
   
   
2. Please follow these rules or else penalities/punishments will most likely occur (forum staff can skip some of these if warranted):
   • 1st Offense: Public/private message (PM) warning.
   • 2nd Offense: Public warning in his/her thread.
   • 3rd Offense: Temporary ban -- User may be notified.
   • 4th Offense: Permanent ban.
     He/She/It must contact Ant/AntDude for reactivation with an apology. No new accounts allowed!
   
   
3. This forum requires a Tapatalk account and is moderated for PG-rated contents and maturity. Failure to follow will result posts/account names being censored, edited, deleted, and/or user's risk of being banned. Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are logged for each post. No flame wars! Please be mature when posting.
   
   
4. No illegal activity shall be discussed here. If it is currently illegal where you exist, do not talk about it here. Don't advertise or ask for live ants with queens (i.e., selling/buying/trading/importing/bringing) publicly and privately except Uncle Milton's and others' queenless red harvester ants. You can sell books, Ant Farms (without ants), dead ant specimens, etc. Also, don't ask and mention on sources to buy/trade/donate live ants even if it is legal and only worker ants are local in your area. There will be no support for these traded/bought ants. Don't mention about them either even if you bought one illegally/legally. See this forum thread for details.
   
   
5. Your question(s) might already be answered in The Ant Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Also, there is a search engine for the forum (also can use outdated Google's. Try to use the FAQ and search engine before posting. If you ask a common question, then one of the forum members will most likely point you to the FAQ. Please do not make duplicate threads/posts since it is considered spamming. One thread in the proper forum (read the forum descriptions) is good enough. Please be patient since not everyone knows the answers and checks here often.
   
   
6. Do not post information you cannot back up. We're glad that you're here posting at the forum and we want you to continue. If you are posting baseless information or flat out making things up, you are not welcome here. This forum is dedicated to intelligent discussion of ants, and many people here who are new and eager to learn do not need or want information that is not accurate.
   
   
7. Post properly in clear and neat English (do your best and tell us if your English isn't strong, so we will know and get a special note on your Tapatalk account name)! If you wish to post in a foreign language, then you still need to post a readable English translation of it. Post a descriptive topic title (e.g., "How do I get a queen ant?") so readers can find your posts easily and actually read them. Avoid basic spelling errors when using as best as possible since the majority agrees to have this. Don't trust the spellchecker 100% either. Be formal! See this forum thread on species/scientific names. There are some spelling and grammar cops/polices/enforcers in the forum, so watch out. Note that poll posts are not editable (by design) even from their original posters, administrators, and moderators. Also, please don't use all CAPS in your posts since it is considered shouting, rude, and annoying. Do properly capitalize the letters. Don't do this: i love ants. Do this: I love ants. Otherwise, they will probably be ignored or get a negative reply. Before posting (new or editing), please double check it with the preview option. This is called proofreading. Let's make the forum look nice/organized/clean and professional and this is for your own good! Common abbreviations/acronyms (e.g., LOL) and emoticons (e.g., :), :(, ;)) are OK/okay, but don't overuse them.
   
   Once in a while, mistakes are OK but do fix them (you can edit your own posts) if you see them or told about them. If you make bad posts a lot, then they will be frowned upon and pointed out. We maintain strict spelling (common slangs are OK, but rare ones do need to explained)) and grammar standards here. We're not going to harass you for every single mistake if you type well, but we do ask that you try to meet these standards. If your post doesn't even come close to meeting these standards, then we will point out your mistakes until your posting is at least somewhat presentable, though we would prefer it if you met our standards fully (and some of us may continue to ignore your posts until you do).
   
   
8. When asking for an ant identification/ID, please give as much details as possible. Examples: Colors, location, size, physical body characteristics, etc. Linking clear photographs from the Web will help a lot if they are available. Read this thread for more tips.
   
   
9. Do not talk about how to make ants fight or other ways to harm ants in the current and future. It is OK to talk about the past as long as you admit you did it and don't do it anymore. You can talk about fight behaviors in the natural environment that is not caused by you, the poster.
   
   
10. To attach ant-related pictures in your posts (inlined), you have two ways of doing it:
    
    
    • Use your Tapatalk account, Kuene, ImageShack, Flickr, and/or Imgur for free image hosts(s)/service(s) [be sure they let you hotlink] for your uploaded images.
    • You will need a Web account (useful for home page/personal Web sites). Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) account should already have one. Some sites do not allow direct/hot linking for images (you will get broken images). You can use them if you want to link to a Web page with pictures, but not pictures directly.

    Before you post the images (no blurry ones please), please keep the file sizes and resolutions small. Not everyone has a big screen and fast Internet connections (e.g., dial-up and satellite). File sizes should be less than 100 KB (kilobytes). The image resolutions should be less than 640x480 pixels. JPEG/JPG images with compression are suitable for photographs. Use a paint/photograph/graphic program for the resizing, cropping, and optimization (e.g., Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, The GIMP (free), Paint.NET (free), and IrfanView (free); some are for Windows only). If you have to show a huge image for details, then please put a warning in the post (e.g. huge image). Or better, just put the URL without image code tags (e.g., http://zimage.com/~ant/BorgAnt60x60.gif). We still have people and ants with slow Internet connections. Please use only GIF, JPG/JPG, and PNG with their file extensions (.gif, .jpg, .jpeg, and .png) instead of other image file formats (e.g., BMP and others since not all Web browsers know those image formats).

11. For free video hosts for short ant-related video clips, you can use YouTube, Vimeo, many others, and even your own Web host if you have one. Please make them stable, clear, and zoomed in or else they will be useless.
    
    
12. Don't put big and/or offensive images, tiny and colorful fonts, sound clips, or anything annoying in your signatures and posts. Don't overuse too many emoticons, images, colors, sizes, etc. to annoy readers.
    
    
13. When referring to another threads or anywhere in a thread, then please post the clickable URL(s)/link(s) and make sure they work. Don't just say 'Look at "Catching an Argentine Queen Ant' thread in Reference Forum'. Post the URL/link (e.g., paste it and Tapatalk will make it clickable for you) so people don't have to find it. This is the Internet. We all work together to make the Internet awesome.
    
    
14. To bring back archived threads/discussions to active status so users can continue to discuss in those threads, please send an e-mail (see the bottom of this Web page for addresses)/private message to both forum administrator/your overlord and moderators/soldiers with the URL(s)/link(s). Then, they will either approve or decline your request(s). If approved, the thread(s) will be moved to a forum to get additional comments, discussions, edits, etc.
    
    
15. Please don't make duplicate and fake/imposter Tapatalk accounts unless there's a good reason for it (e.g., can't access the old one). Duplicate account(s) will be banned.
    
    
16. Please kindly vote any good forum threads by giving points (ratings).
    
    
17. Do NOT reply to spammers. Just report them to Tapatalk's abuse department through here with a link to the post(s) [profile link would do] as evidences. A staff member will take care of them.
    
    
18. Please understand people that although we will normally do our best to follow the guidelines listed here some offenses can and may well result in immediate suspension of posting priviledges or banning entirely. Obvious examples would be spamming, excessive profanity, extreme disrespect (be nice/friendly to everyone, and don't be a troll/pest) for other forum members and moderators. Each instance will be dealt with on a case by case basis. Staff members have the rights to enforce the rules (e.g., delete posts, move posts, ban users, etc.). If there are problems, then please kindly contact this forum's overlord administrator and soldiers/moderators with evidences (screen (shot/capture)s, logs, etc.). This list is subject to change at any time. This forum is strict and has high standards. If you don't like them, then please leave. Let's work together to make this place awesome.

Watch this introduction if you need visual aid for some of these items.

Forum Staff Members' E-mail Addresses (remove YUKU when e-mailing): Administrator/Overlord (Ant(Dude)) and Moderator/Soldier (Mrmacophyl). Please do not e-mail/message with ant questions. That is what this public forum is for. Also, please do not ignore them if they request something.

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