9. Crazy Ants Ravaged Texas
“Crazy ants” are cousins to fire ants but considerably more dangerous. They originated in South America and arrived in Texas during the 1930s on board a cargo ship. Since then, they spread to 27 counties throughout the state, wreaking a trail of havoc and destruction. They are particularly pernicious around electrical systems, where they chew through wiring and insulation. They have been known to destroy computers and even short out electrical equipment in plants, causing them to shut down temporarily. More horrifying is the fact that they reproduce at such a rapid rate that a one-acre field can quickly become swarmed by as many as 20 billion crazy ants.
Climate change has witnessed the expansion of many kinds of ants, including the fire and “crazy” ants, outside of their normal endemic territories. With the unpredictable nature of expansion of species, it is quite possible ants like the crazy ant will expand into areas where they lack natural predators or have an overabundance of food, the types of checks and balances that nature relied on to manage populations before the intervention of human-generated climate change.