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Anthropomorphism is a huge problem when studying animal cognition of any kind and the more different they are from humans the bigger the problem becomes, swarm intelligence of any kind is most likely the pinnacle of this. It mostly disappears when going into full academic research, but for any kind of popular science it's very problematic. Understanding the hive mind begins with understanding the fundamental differences between their behavior and ours and terms like soldiers, queen and worker definitely make that harder, but you can circumvent that by redefining the terms, so in that regard you do disassociate it from the human usage. For example, the queen. First of all, it is by no means a queen, it has no authority in a colony in any way and thus any kind of ruling term is already quite wrong. The queen is almost solely a mother and the breeding machine for the colony and it is treated as such, which means she gets protected, taken care of, nourished etc., but also dragged around, attacked if she does something wrong, up to a point where the queen is locked in a chamber as a procreation slave without the ability to even move. However, the term mother is not much better and quite relative in a system where the ants are closer related to each other (they share up to 75% of their genes) than to their mother (50%). The father is not existant. So family terms are also not really amazing either. So yeah, as you can see, it's a difficult thing when talking about these things and it often gets misunderstood, but that's just how it is. Understanding why your dog has so much fun carrying a toy for you is already complex, but understanding how stigmergy and a hive mind works is an entire different thing. Falling back to anthropomorphism and regular human terms is an attempt to make a difficult thing easier, at the cost of accuracy.
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Feb 14, 2021 21:43
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Describing the behavior as democratic also is a simplification and a human version of it, but it does at least come closer. From a meta perspective, the colony acts as one organism and each ant is just part of that organism. The decision process of what to do is not up to each ant and thus democratic decision making or "convincing" does and can not happen, as democracy requires opinions and decisions on the individual basis coming together, which isn't what's happening. It does come closer though in the sense that it appears like that due to the fact that the basics of decision making is based on a simple trial and error system, where more ants doing the same thing will lead to that thing happening. None of the single individuals need to have the final picture in mind though and they do not need to have an opinion. Simply said, if an ant finds honey and goes to it, it spreads a "food" pheromone on the honey and on the way back to the nest. Others might find that trail and also feel inclined to follow it, they do not know where it leads or what food it might be and if it's not hungry or not collecting food for others on the nest, it also won't follow a pheromone like that. If it, however, does follow it, it will lay another layer of pheromones on top of the trail, further increasing the likelihood of even more hungry ants coming that way. This goes on and on, where each and every ant does not know where the trail leads to, or that there's anything on there and it doesn't go there because it got convinced that this is a good way, it's simply hungry (or wants to refill its social stomach) and smells an increasingly dense food pheromone. That's how ant trails happen. These mechanics are a representation for the colony itself acting. The colony is hungry, because many individual ants are and it stops being hungry after eating the honey, at which point the trail will dissipate and the ants stop going there. They do this for everything and the only real decision making only happens on an abstract meta layer where the hive mind needs, wants and acts and the individuals only play their part in making that happen. That's also why ants are heavily invested in sacrificing themselves in service of the colony, a behavior you would never see in other animals where self preservation is usually a very valuable thing.
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Feb 14, 2021 23:00
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Yes absolutely! It is a process for sure, the part where we start to talk about a hive mind and any kind of swarm intelligence is when they start doing actual things and be part of a larger system where they act as one. For example, individual ants are, more or less, not really affected by evolutionary pressure, the colony however is. Ants randomly show up with new properties and if that is proven to be more effective for the colony, that property will stick around. At the same time, weak or sick ants don't just die off, they can be taken care of and don't have to cause the colony any trouble. It offers room for more adaptation and special behavior in various ways and can lead to stunning special features. That's why it's possible to be sacrificial for the sake of the colony, to not change your body for 100 million years or more (like primal ants) or even have evolutionary disadvantages turn into advantages, like parasitic queens that have no legs, no eyes or mouth.
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Feb 15, 2021 00:24
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I'd play the poo poo out of that
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Feb 15, 2021 09:31
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Yes, Messor or other harvester ants are the prime choice there. They hardly ever hunt insects and only need seeds of many kinds, which already contain protein en mass. They collect these seeds and bake bread out of them that feeds the entire colony. For the rare occasion where you still need to offer some extra proteins (every other month tops), you can just use regular meat that you would eat yourself, or use dog or cat food. Usually those get accepted quite well. Additionally you can always throw a fly or mosquito you might encounter in there, they are happy to take it and the prey does not need to be alive.
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Feb 17, 2021 09:31
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It would need to be non-dry food, be aware that adult ants are in general unable to consume solid food, due to the way their mouths work. Only the larvae have teeth and can actually digest solid food, so you'd only feed those with it. However, regular canned dog or cat food works fine, as well as most non-seasoned meat, eggs or similar animal-based sources of proteins. So no need to dump a full steak in there, raw unseasoned meat of any kind works fine, you can just cut it down into thin slices or mash it together and offer it in a small bowl, a bottle lid or whatever you got. You need to remove whatever they leave after a day or two at max though, else it's going to dry out and turn inedible for them, or it starts to mold which can cause trouble. Now, for regular ant species you'd have to offer something like that, highly depending on the size of the colony, once a week or so, around twice a month for small baby colonies. For harvester ants of any kind though, that is not needed, they eat almost exclusively the bread they produce out of seeds you offer them, those seeds can be stored for years as they chemically inactivate their ability to sprout, so you can always offer them a bowl of seeds or just spread it out all over their out world so they can get into some collecting fun, which they love. Additional meat or insects are only needed to boost egg and larva production, which you can do maybe every two months or so, depending on how much brood they already produce. These ants will mostly ignore anything you offer them and if you do offer them some additional proteins and they ignore it entirely, that's a sign that everything is going great.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:23
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There is nothing terrible about it being cooked and seasoned, the ants generally won't touch anything they can't eat. Cooked is fine in general, it just loses quite a bunch of liquid which makes it potentially less interesting for the ants, but it's no biggie at all if they accept it cooked. Seasoned is another thing, as ants have a very, very, very sensitive ability to smell, that exceeds even dogs noses and pepper/salt and similar stuff makes it less attractive for them. My ants will not touch anything that has any considerable amount of salt in it, which, however, is a good thing, as it can dry them out and cause some problems. In general though, if you want to be on the safe side and not handle insects, I'd recommend to just buy a can of dog or cat food once a month, which in general is safe to eat, costs not much and you can just put a lid on an open can and store it for a good while in your fridge. The smallest can will do, too, it would probably take ants ages to eat through a whole can and you don't have to worry about if what you eat also fits them in any way. If you ever do happen to kill a fly or mosquito or whatever at home, just throw it in, too, I'm sure they'll love it just as much. The main food for ants is sugar based anyways, I recommend honey, which you always should have available for them in a bowl or lid or even dispenser. The proteins are just for the queen and brood, which is certainly vital, but nothing you have to have a headache over if handling insects is an issue. Even if you wouldn't feed anything at all (except some sort of carbons, sugar, honey or similar) for a while, worst case is that egg production stops and brood stops growing or goes into emergency pupa state, which is bad, but it won't kill the colony if they get anything at all later on. edit: Oh missed the part about roasted seeds: no, those actually have to be untouched. Salt on them would hurt the ants and smells terrible for them, they probably would go around it and roasting seeds destroys most of the enzymes stored within, which the ants need to be able to make bread out of it. Regular uncooked, unseasoned sunflower seeds, flower seeds in general, as well as grass seeds, vegetables, really anything you can find in a raw, seed state of a plant will work fine. Harvester ants have the ability to categorize and manipulate the seeds internal functions, so they will collect them, sort them based on species, prevent them from sprouting and store them for months, sometimes years, inside their chambers. That is a huge advantage if you prefer not to worry about your pets regularly, as if you give them seeds at one point and then forget about it, you can probably spend many months not giving anything and they can easily manage. Harvester ants also do not or rather barely need honey or sugar water, it's good to have a bit around just in case, but it's around 98% seeds only for them. Only disadvantage for harvester ants is that you need a comparably large enclosure as they, for one, tend to be rather large compared to other local ants and they need space to be able to store and manage their seeds. Where my ants are more than happy in a small 5x15x5cm nest and are almost scared of all the free space, harvester ants will need at least twice that size, depending on the species even more. Still, for any typical terrarium/reptile etc pet keeping, it's tiny. Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 10:50 on Feb 20, 2021 |
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Feb 20, 2021 10:38
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Usually they will go there occasionally, you probably just miss it because a few of them do it, fill their social stomach with honey and feed the rest of the colony from that, so that not every ant has to go there by itself. If you catch a lot of ants drinking honey or sugar water at once, that's a sign that they are really really hungry, which is usually not an issue when keeping them. The fact that they buried it, however, shows that they care and drink a lot from it, as that means they are protecting their most important food source from potential predators or thieves. When they are not hungry though, they will not go there, which gives the impression that they would ignore the honey. They are not, though, and it's important to always have something around for them. Hungry ants are very difficult to keep, believe me.
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Feb 20, 2021 17:40
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crazyvanman posted:Sorry for taking a long time to respond. Thanks for responding to my question about terminology, I really enjoyed the answers. As generally a history person I come from a space where language and its ambiguities is kind of the fun and useful part. However also having an interest in science/ecology I notice that one big difference is that using language is actually a pain and you have to compromise a lot. Particularly in English when a lot of the terms come out of the days of 'natural history' and the Victorian age and all its concurrent baggage. That is a really good question in multiple ways, especially because the answer is that we do not know for sure. The details of ant communication is to this day largely a mystery. However, what you are describing happens a lot, sometimes in hilarious ways. I can observe my ants carrying away a fly and one or maybe even multiple ants drag it in the exact opposite direction than the rest and also away from the nest. Sometimes they almost "fight" about where to go in these ways. In the principle of stigmergy, which is the modular setup ants use to accomplish anything, disagreements like this can happen and are not only part of the process, but necessary. That way it will always be certain, that the best possible option will come out of an action, because every other action will have proven worse than the rest. What we do not know for sure is whether the ants are aware of these hiccups in coordination and thus basically encourage each individual ant to go through its own decision process while determining where to go - thus increasing the likelihood of good options - or whether it's due to communication errors, as in, the ant just doesn't know what'd be better. The latter seems obvious and intuitively correct, but it's rather unlikely, because if that would be the case, ants wouldn't be so brutally efficient in what they do, as every action would result in a good portion of ants being confused about where to go and thus hinderng the actual effort. That is not, however, what's happening. It seems that an almost planned number of ants decides against doing what's obvious in order to explore new possible options, the rest of them either goes along their own way, or adapts to what the "renegade" ant wants to happen. A good example of this theory of "planned miscommunication" is when you observe ants building an ant trail. They are, no joke, biologically incapable of causing traffic jams. That is, because even if the chosen road is getting ever smaller and the number of ants running on it gets ever bigger, at a certain breaking point, suddenly and out of nowhere, single ants will stop moving. They will stand in the middle of the road, not doing anything. That way they transform into an obstacle the other ants have to run around, which they then start doing. This causes the traffic to be more organized instead of less organized, though, because then ants going in the one direction will go around the obstacle ant on a certain path, the other ones do the opposite. It's like they put up traffic cones to guide the traffic of ants and avoid crashing into each other. We have researched this behavior in brutal detail over the past few years and no matter what we throw at them, they always do this. We do not know what motivates a single ant to behave like that and not follow the swarm anymore, there was no specific pheromone or chemical isolated that we could in any way associate with this behavior, but it's clear that in the bigger picture of what the colony as a super-organism wants and needs is highly beneficial and thus has stuck around over hundreds of millions of years. By the way, this is not just an ant thing, bees also do that, as well as wasps. Termites, however, organize differently than this, so it seems likely that this is part of what the common ancestors of hymenoptera (ants, wasps, bees, bumblebees etc.) did. aphid_licker posted:Very cool time lapse of a fire ant colony rebuilding after a rainstorm: Oh hell yes, that is so amazing! Those landslides are exactly part of the process, it needs to be, so that the resulting hill will be strong enough to support everything as before. It's fascinating to see how tireless they work to rebuild their home, imagine what kind of coordination we humans would need to accomplish that. And they do neither talk nor have any bosses!
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Feb 23, 2021 19:05
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I'm trying something new. The ants are especially ravenous lately and eating more than I can offer, it's insane. I had to get three additional packs of fly farms as they just kept devouring loads of them every day. I swapped to meal worms and beetles, but it's still not enough. Today, they are getting a mouse. I've never fed them a mammal before and usually don't like to do this, as it's simply a mess, but I want to see if they're up to the task. They continuously upped my expectations by eating and handling more and more, even bigger insects, now I want to see if they can handle something truly big. Of course, it's a frozen, already dead mouse I got from a pet store, I would never kill a rodent for them, my love for ants has limits. If they manage to actually eat a part of it, I can be pretty sure that they are hungry for a good reason, most likely being that they are getting ready to produce alates, meaning males and new queens, to go for a nuptial flight in the spring. No idea how to handle those yet, but I'm surely going to figure something out!
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Mar 16, 2021 11:33
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Crazy ants are super special. This common name refers to the genus Paratrechina in the subfamily Formicinae and usually in the context of pests people are talking about the species Paratrechina longicornis, or longhorn crazy ants. They are the only species of this genus who are not anymore endemic to one, small part of the world, but who spread through the entire planet and are a devastating factor for local wildlife. Originally they come from a rather small area in sub Sahara Africa, specialized in many ways and depending on tropical habitats, they learned to adapt to artifical environments in a speed and success that is almost unique in the ant world, allowing them to quickly colonize the entire planet along with humans doing the same. Originally they required humid, warm tropical forests, now they are even a pest in Sweden and they learned to live in straight up deserts, too. The only other ant species that managed to be this successful in becoming a pest is the Pharaoh ant, who even manages to live and thrive inside of computers. The thing with crazy ants is their ability to adapt to new environments in record speed, which is partially due to their crazy numbers and behavior, hence the name, as well as one particularly effective way to reproduce. For one, they can make every living space work. Originally living in trees and plants, they found warehouses and ships to be just as nice. They are able to import loads of water into dry areas by building water roads, warm or cool their nest as needed by spreading water and installing a ventilation system, or leaving out little stones to warm up in the sun before carrying them home and using them as radiators. They are fiercely aggressive, feed almost exclusively on honeydew and invertebrates which they are able to breed specifically and can outcompete most other animals of their size due to their rapid growth, their potent venom, their ability to neutralize specific forms of acid (like hostile ant venom) using their own, their fast and quick behavior and their small size. A research experiment in Arizona conducted in 1996 brought to light, that in only 5 years, those crazy ants managed to dominate an entire artificial ecosystem constructed for this purposes almost completely after being introduced with low numbers. The only other animals they left alive were those they couldn't hunt, like massively armored beetles and millipedes, or those too small to be interesting, like mites or springtails. All other ant species, and there were dozens before, went extinct due to their wars. Additionally, they have a very, very rare and special ability called Thelytoky. Usually, ants are always females if they have two sets of chromosomes (diploidy) and always males if they have only one (haploidy). This is, simplified, due to the fact there there is one specific sex gene present on those chromosomes that will always turn ants female if this gene exists twice (like if you have two chromosomes) and, in turn, male if it doesn't. Crazy ants turn this concept upside down by being able to clone. Female alates, meaning queens, are able to produce a living 100% genetic copy of themselves as their daughters with only one, their own, set of chromosomes. The same happens for males, who obviously always have this property. At the same time they are not really, technical clones, because recombination still happens. This means that they use this one set of chromosomes and mix it up to produce new properties, a process that usually happens only with two, different sets of chromosomes. To illustrate this, imagine that you have one set of genes given to you to 50% by your dad and 50% by your mom. Those two sets mixed up and produced you. These ant mothers do the same, but using 100% their own genes instead of using one half from each sex. The process is the same, but the genetic pool is limited to only one origin. This leads to the special case where all females and all males in a colony can be 100% genetic daughters of their mother without a father, keeping those two strings of genes entirely separated. These siblings that all come from one mother are then able to successfully breed with each other, finally mixing up their genes and recombining them to a genetically new ant without the usual downsides of inbreeding. This new ant can then do the same with its own children, and so on. This limits their genetic adaptability of course, but they compensate this by being so adaptive using their eusociality. That's why they can breed unnaturally fast and adapt to every situation by being just so many. They can produce whole generations within mere months and produce legions of ants, from which the alates can produce even more using cloning and inbreeding even in harsh situations. Their success at this is so vast that there is no technology available to combat them at all, making them a terrible pest that causes major damage all over the place and will inevitably lead to local ecological desasters where they strip a place entirely of resources before turning on each other, which ends in devastation we usually only know from human intervention. This will play a major, yet publicly invisible, role in the coming decades when climate change will speed up this process beyond imagination. Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 12:44 on Apr 6, 2021 |
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Apr 6, 2021 12:28
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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Wow, fascinating! Thanks. It sounds like the article is actually about a different species of crazy ant, the Nylanderia fulva aka Rasberry crazy ant aka tawny crazy ant. Not sure if the same genetic quirk applies, but also seems like their spread has still been "contained" to the Gulf coast rather than sweeping across the continental US... These are the ones that seem to be attracted to electrical equipment; the article mentions a few instances of people only discovering they have infestations after an appliance short circuits and when they go to suss it out, they find a mass of ants. Yeah it does, the entire genus is, to a varying degree, capable of this mechanism, but only this one species is considered a world wide pest, the rest is more or less contained. Human intervention was needed mostly because of the distances they needed to cross. These ants are basically surrounded by enemies that decimate them so successfully in their ecosystem that spreading is not really happening, hence why most species of this kind are usually endemic to one specific spot. Inside of this bubble they were under such intense evolutionary pressure by predators and the environment that they developed such new, adaptive way to react to it and thus managed to survive. We exported them out of this bubble and into the world, where they had nothing to fear and found easy prey everywhere. Plus, they figured that human settlements in particular are ideal places to live, as we for some reason always keep our houses warm and don't tolerate cold, always have food around and do a lot of stuff they like, too. Additionally, research suggests that this special genetic mechanism that really tipped the scale in their favor is an extremely new development, probably from the past 400 to 300 years, which is nothing in evolution time. It's like they grew up in a brutal level environment where they barely survived. Now they find themselves overpowered outside of their native habitat.
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Apr 6, 2021 19:58
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Depending on the species, yes, certainly! Many ants can chew through extremely tough materials, most can do it but don't use it unless they need to though. Ant mandibles and the entire mouth apparatus consisting out of the mandibles plus maxilla are extremely efficient at biting through stuff, as they can use a minimal amount of energy to put a maximum amount of pressure on a very small area. Most new world ant species, for example, have no problems chewing through hardened concrete. It takes time and a lot of ants, of course, but time is not a resource they aren't willing to spare and if there's a reason to do so, there always will be enough ants to do that. Regular minerals, like stones you find just lying around, are no problem for most ant species in general. That said, limestone is relatively soft and easy to work with, hence why we use it a lot for our stuff. In that case, however, when laying it out on the entrance, there might be a different reason why they do that, since when burrowing they usually have a designated spot where they dump the soil they dig up. Depending on the origin of the limestone there, it might be that it has certain antiseptic qualities. Since the material limestone is made of, mostly calcium carbonate, is very vulnerable to low pH environments and water in and around caves often tends to be a bit acidic, they can use it to dissolve the limestone slowly, lay it out on the entrance and disinfect incoming ants. They can detect it, too, since when dissolving through acid, limestone produces a ton of carbon dioxide, which the ants are capable of sensing using their antenna. That's a thing that is well known and researched from ants harvesting resin from trees, sometimes even by systematically inflicting minor wounds into the tree to provoke resin production and harvest it later. They then lay it in and around the nest and use its antiseptic quality based on the oils and carboxylic acids to kill of germs and treat infected ants. It's just a possibility of course, there could be a lot of reasons they do that specifically at that spot, but it seems possible to me.
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Apr 7, 2021 07:06
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Anime is forbidden in the ant world 
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Apr 7, 2021 20:40
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Yup, it's most likely that. Technically we don't know if they sense electricity and it's not entirely impossible that they can using their hyper sensitive antenna, but it seems rather unlikely, simply as there is no observable reason for them to develop such a specific skill. Just like with pharaoh ants being driven to move into computers or start fires by chewing through cables, it's most likely the heat that they want to use or transport around for various reasons, not the electricity itself. Even if they were able to sense it, and again it's entirely possible there are animals who can do that, our regular power levels are probably way too high for them to handle. Even eels who can do that and use and generate electricity use it at a very, very low level, simply as it's not efficient to generate, sense or handle that much energy, unless you want to power a city.
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Apr 8, 2021 04:43
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I am not entirely convinced that Pharaoh ants as a species specifically exist to annoy humans tbh, they are insanely effective at it.
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Apr 8, 2021 05:51
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Awww look at them go, they are so much better at organizing this than I will ever be
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Apr 22, 2021 13:42
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That just happens. They only need proteins when they plan to expand or have to feed their young, so hunting is a waste of resources if they can't use it straight away. Hell, it may not be ants, but I fed my scorpion some locusts around four months ago, he never touched them until they were fully grown up and already mating. Then, suddenly, in a matter of a few days, he went on a killing spree and murdered them all to have the nest back on his own. I guess sometimes you just don't feel like having a hotdog, even if said hotdog is living right next to you, ready to be eaten. 
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Apr 22, 2021 14:54
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News from planet ants: My ants broke out and started a full scale invasion of my other pets. They figured that only a few meters right of them there is a nice, cozy enclosure full of tasty insects and launched a huge invasion force to get a snack of them. Took me a day to find and fix the spot they used to get out and I'm still collecting ants and throwing back in. Total casualties, at least three baby roaches and a lot of severely traumatized pets.  Keep your ant enclosures safe! They will not hesitate to eat your other pets!
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May 20, 2021 12:58
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Raenir Salazar posted:Which pets other than feeder insects would be most to fear from an ant invasion? What species of ants launched the raids? DINOPONERA!?!!!??? Oh no, it's my tame Lasius colony that launched the invasion and they tried to get a hold of my roaches and woodlice I keep together, as well as the baby locusts that currently are with them. Those aren't even feeder insects for them, the roaches are far too big for them, but apparently they were ravenous enough to engage them anyways. We're talking 8 to 10cm big roaches fighting off dozens of ants climbing on top of them, it was crazy! That outworld is gorgeous, the recent incident also motivated me to redesign my setup and I'm getting new stuff soon got a full do-over of both the outworld as well as their nest. I hope they'll like it!! palindrome posted:When a colony is raiding another colony, do we get friendly fire incidents? I'm imagining that down in the enemy tunnels you may not be able to tell friend from foe with 100% accuracy. The chaos and confusion of the close fighting could lead to your buddy ant accidentally identifying you as an enemy and ripping your head off. So ants identify each other almost exclusively via smell. Every colony has a very, very specific colony smell that is based on a specific mixture of pheromones (up to 23 different pheromones in one mixture so far were identified for this purpose, probably a lot more!) they can create. This smell is so unique due to the high number of chemicals mixed together and the really insane ability of ants to smell. If you think dogs can smell well, think again when it comes to ants! If you look through the eyes of an ant, it seems likely that for them, the world is almost entirely smelling. They see their sisters and family in one color, foreign ants in a bright, different one, prey in yet another one, a potential danger, say, a mammal ripping up their nest, in even another. Honey smells different based on what the bees collected to produce it, honeydew changes its composition based on what plants the aphids are eating, ants change smell based on where they were born. Imagine, harvester ants that collects seeds are able to sort them by species, as they can smell what plant this seed will become! This system is so efficient that there is rarely a case of friendly fire during ant raids. Army ants can do this en mass and distinguish between each other even when thousands of ants jump onto a single victim. The only case where they do get confused is when something begins to smell like their own, for example because it's literally covered in ant blood and parts of slain corpses, in which case they can still figure out how they act, where they are going, if they present a danger or not. Parasitic ants use this setup for their own gain, too, where the parasites deliberately kill lone ants to bath in their blood over and over again until they start to smell like they belong there. Afterwards they carry the corpse of a killed ant on their backs or keep parts of their victim in their mandibles to appear like them, too, and act accordingly carefully. They sneak into the nest and kill the victim queen stealthily to also cover themselves in their smell and take their place without the other ants noticing. If they do notice, they kill them right away, or get killed by their sisters who fell for the trick and believe there's an ant attacking the (false) queen, resulting in a civil war between those who fell for the parasite and those who didn't. Even still, these tactics only work in a fraction of the attempts made, around 94% of parasitic queens trying this get killed in the process as the smell they try to obtain is so specific that the ants can't be fooled. So even when someone tries to abuse this setup for their own gain, it rarely succeeds. The same goes for other species of animals living alongside ants in their colonies. There are tons of bugs, spiders like mites or other arthropods living in their homes and they usually use a mixture of obtaining the colony's smell, not seeking any trouble and staying away from ants as much as possible to be left alone. Casualties still happen very often, though, so ants definitely have a very, very clear image of how their own family looks like and can clearly distinguish between them and strangers. Goons Are Gifts fucked around with this message at 08:49 on May 21, 2021 |
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May 21, 2021 08:44
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That's entirely natural, mammals in general but primats in particular are made to think for themselves and act individually, we can't even cooperate when our life depends on it, unless given a structure (like a hierarchy) to do so. This makes it pretty much impossible for us to imagine how it is to be an ant and what their motivation is. Imagine seeing the world through smelling only (there are various ant species that entirely lack eyes, for example, and ants in general have no ears of any kind) being able to smell friend and foe, hunt by smell, take care of your kids by smell and taste. In a more general approach, there's the epistemological approach asking the question "What is it like to be a bat?" due to seeing the world through ultra sonic waves, but the same, a bit more abstract question can be applied ants, asking "What is it like to be part of a collective?" That's what fascinates me so much about these amazing animals, just observing their behavior and asking myself, what might drive this particular ant doing this specific job. Asking an ant colony this, it might be a bit like asking your arm why he does what he does and that's so exciting to think about, I think!
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May 21, 2021 11:50
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Raenir Salazar posted:By "tame" you just mean you happen to have them captive right. I don't think the tame vs domesticated distinction makes sense for most insects No I mean domesticated, my ants are friends that do the household for me  I meant tame because it's "just" Lasius, you know, easy to go, care free ants that are happy with anything and usually aren't that much into invasions, war or anything, they just want to herd some aphids, get their honey, eat insects and grow, grow, grow with their one brave queen doing all the work. However, yeah, there are ants with spectacular eye sight, but that's rather uncommon. Most ants rely on smelling via their antenna to move around, but of course, this varies greatly between species. Some ants don't have eyes at all, others have rather small antenna and rely on eyes instead, it entirely depends on the circumstances. Either way, the way an ant thinks about and perceives its own colony is probably very special! Also, some of my ants decided, again, that the nest is a bit too moist for some selected (mostly major) babies, so they moved into the connection pipe. They do this every now and then to reach optimal humidity and temperature for the brood. This allows some special insight in their every day life though, so I made a short video of them going about their business! You can see ants carrying in their most recent food (fruit flies), ants taking care of the larvae (the small, somewhat colorless beans on the left side) and, at the end of the video, the big pile of pupae on the right side of the tube, with brood workers all over the place in between. Cleaning, caring for the babies, covering them in saliva, you can even see two ants feeding each other via tropholaxis (the process of transporting food from one stomach into another) at the end, shortly before the pupae are visible. This is just a fraction of their brood and actual numbers, as they seem only to select a few specific babies for the tube treatment, the rest is inside the nest with the queen, where multitudes more workers take care of everything. https://thumbs.gfycat.com/RepulsiveDeadAztecant-mobile.mp4
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May 23, 2021 15:56
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Absolutely, I find it even inspiring to look into the nest or even just the outworld and observe them being busy at all times. They are never lazy, never slow, there's always something happening somewhere! Some take care of the brood, help the queen, feed each other, clean up dirt or food remains, some others scout the outworld, forage for new food, dig new holes or entire tunnel networks, manage the junkyard or bury deceased ants at the ant cemetery. The ants are such a refreshing view to my other pets that usually don't do a lot, like my spider that hasn't moved out of her house in 4 months now, they're always active and creative. I wish I had this energy!
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May 24, 2021 07:13
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Given that they already have a very functional aphid farm going, you can assume that they are doing well in terms of food anyways, so providing another source is probably an efficient way to decrease their motivation in herding even more aphids. So if your goal is to keep them around in some way, avoid an invasion of your home and decrease the number of aphid farms, feeding them regularly is a fine idea. You won't bloat their numbers, because sugar in general/honey/honeydew/aphid poop/sweet poo poo is only good to sustain them, not to let them grow. They (as in, the queen for eggs and the babies to grow) require proteins to grow and that's a way more limited bottleneck than sweet stuff. Prey insects on balconies are usually already limited, so providing an efficient source of carbohydrates shouldn't be an issue in terms of letting them grow. If you do not want them around anymore, relocating is probably the best way, however assuming their numbers are great that's not gonna be easy. Eradication would also be an option, Lasius Niger are easy to fight, although of course I wouldn't recommend that, because those poor babies need some space!! Note that, depending on your location, right now they are in a very important part of the cycle, too, leading to massive hunger and growth and they won't stay this active and hungry for long. They might be preparing for nuptial flight season right now and their activities will go down considerably once that is done.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:52
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Porcellio and other destruents are usually not really a target for ants unless desperate, because they have fierce defenses and have barely proteins in them to make the fight worth it, plus the ants know that they clean up and thus usually like to have them around Many woodlice species like those even are allowed to live inside the nest as long as they don't bother them with anything bad. The size of their prey is usually only limited by their numbers and their will to try a fight. I've seen my ants attack my peaceful 12cm large roaches without any hesitation, they just went hundreds of ants at once. If already dead, they will happily dissect any big corpse, too, mice, rats, hell they'd probably eat humans if they get the chance. They can't kill mammals though, Lasius are lacking stingers and advanced towards venom sprayer devices on their butts, which cannot penetrate skin. So basically, they will happily engage with anything they can kill, any kind of insect from smaller than them to many times larger than them. Even huge 15cm desert locusts work fine, since their acid can dissolve the exoskeleton and thus make them vulnerable. You just need even more ants! So yeah, you should be fine feeding them honey, sugar water, whatever goes. It should be quite a spectacle to see all of them drinking it empty! It's very important to do it regularly though, so they will quickly learn that this is a reliable source of food and thus they will let the aphids move on eventually. Note, however, that especially Lasius are very, very connected and caring to their aphids and love them herd them en mass, it's just their thing, so it will probably take a long while until they abandon their farm project. Maybe you can speed up the process by offering dedicated aphid plants, too? Some cheap poo poo you can buy in any grocery store, basil or something. Plant it nearby (after washing it), fresh and juicy they will attract the aphids in no time and leave your other plants some room to breathe. Also, they probably regard most of the balcony as their domain, that's why they move around so much. Ants will happily spend all day rearranging the decoration of their nest and the position of the brood, they are never satisfied with how things are. My ants spread over three nests and still use the pipes at night, moving tons of brood into them and relocating them every morning when the sun goes up and it's too bright for them to stay there. It's just their thing to carry babies around all day long.
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Jun 6, 2021 21:40
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yeah ants are usually quite wasteful and have no solid idea of when to be reluctant with resources, so they spread aphids all over the place quickly. Combined with some extra food they may be able to reduce the total number though as soon as the aphids stop working for them (when the plants start to wither), but it's just a theory, they may as well use it as incentive to spread aphids even more. It's funny to think that they provide safety and resources for the aphids and are repaid by being allowed to eat aphid rear end. It's all just efficient rear end eating
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Jun 7, 2021 09:17
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Not at all, they care deeply about their aphid herds and protect them from all harm. They rub their antenna against the aphid's rear end to provoke them to poop out the honeydew and lick it up, just like you suggest, and since aphids can't actually suck on a plant, but have to rely on the juice flowing into them with a certain pressure, the ants will unplug them and move to a different part of plant or even a whole other plants once the poop stops appearing. If the aphids are in danger, they even pick them up and carry them into their nest or attack potential attackers right away to protect them. They even motivate the aphids to breed and take care of their brood from time to time. They eat rear end, it's what they do, they wouldn't eat the guy who that rear end belongs to.
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Jun 8, 2021 05:12
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Yeah I wouldn't exclude them slaughtering some of their pets if in need, but aphids have barely any nutritional value for ants, they're small and probably taste very weird as they're filled with honeydew, which means for them it's probably like eating a steak that's filled with chocolate. Usually the ants are very restrictive in separating energy food and protein food and don't mix it up, mostly because proteins are exclusively needed for larvae growth and queen egg production, while carbohydrates are needed to sustain all ants at once. Either way, before they start eating feeding the larvae to each other (that happens in times of desperation to feed those babies that appear the healthiest), they likely consider eating aphids instead.
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Jun 8, 2021 06:02
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Raenir Salazar posted:There are some ants that do have cattle; they raise insects to later eat. Only aphids are coming up with google but I've heard of ants that keep livestock underground. Dunno if they are also aphids or some kind of isopod. Absolutely, there is a whole series of animals that, in general, live with ants in peace, this is called myrmecophily. Usually this interaction is by its nature commensalistic, which is one step above parasitism (damaging the host) but also one below symbiosis (benefiting each other), as only one party benefits from the interaction, while the other is more or less not affected by it. A lot of isopods and several bugs live with ants like that, some species are specialized and depending on doing so. Those often are culled first when there's any need and sometimes the ants specifically boost their growth to have some sort of backup cattle in case they need them.
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Jun 8, 2021 06:12
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Yeah they do, but that's such a minor amount that they can process the proteins for that just by occasionally eating leftover trash, say, hatched pupae that left their cocoon behind or regular food they collect anyways, or when processing parts of their own muscles (which happens constantly, similar to how humans do it, too) and restoring it elsewhere. That said, the ability of ants to heal is in general rather limited, since their biological system is rather wasteful and ineffective in being maintained. Ants have practically no ability to store energy, like fat or whatever and repairing an exoskeleton is a tough challenge, chemically speaking. Since adult ants also, in contrast to many other insects, do not molt or grow anymore in any way, severe injuries usually stay forever if not lethal on their own. The most effective way to treat wounds is to close them up with saliva and hope it works out. It's like throwing glue on an open wound, not in theory a bad concept, but not that great either. It is no uncommon for ants to die days after they were injured, as they had no proper way to fix it up to a point where the damage turned lethal over time. A fully grown colony that no longer has a queen or brood, for example after a monogynous colony lost their sole queen and cannot replace her somehow, has practically no need to collect proteins anymore. They do it, of course, it's in their system, but they wouldn't really starve to death even when deprived of prey insects for several weeks.
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Jun 8, 2021 10:20
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Almost all ants actually do colonize their surroundings via satellite nests that originate from the mother nest. Even my ants do that! They live in three nests, with one main one containing the brood and queen, and two smaller ones they use for some singular pupae that need special attention or larvae that tend to eat their siblings by accident and stuff like that. Sometimes in nature these satellite nests even secede from the main colony (in polygynous species with multiple queens, that is) and there even are wars for independence! Later they even enter truces and leave alongside in peace again, or wipe each other out. So there is, in fact, plenty of politics between a parent and a daughter colony. Granted, most of these extra nests happen only a rather medium distance away from the original one, usually not more than 100 meters, but for ant size that's not nothing either. Plus, the other reason is that ants appear not to form colonies as in, we colonized another continent and stuff, but they do colonize foreign soil all the time, as in, the founding of new nests and spreading their many empires. I do think that that's what the term originated from, too, but I also read somewhere at some point that the term colony is mostly meant to offer differentiation to the other hymenopteran hives as bees and wasps build them.
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Jul 1, 2021 08:11
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So in terms of general navigation, ants mostly rely on pheromones, at least the more modern ones do. However, if you place a singular ant nearby a nest after wiping off any pheromones, they still would find their way back and wouldn't be completely lost either, even the most evolved ants nowadays that sacrificed a lot of their individual power to grow as a collective. Apart from a few exceptions, ants have eyes. They may not be big and usually they are not very good, mostly because the rather tiny size and the nature of oculus compositus means they have trouble watching fast stuff, which is a paradox given that most ants move very quickly on their own. So in a sense, ants are mostly blind while moving (not entirely, they are probably able to observe patterns, colors, sizes and light), but not at all blind while standing still. They can look a few meters ahead similar to how we can and are very able to optically identify other ants, nests, predators and stuff like that. In fact, due to the way their eyes work, it's actually the case that they can see even better when it's wet around them. This is because when it rains, pheromones usually get washed away and relying on nothing but those would leave them in an endless struggle of following swimming chemicals (most pheromones react with or dissolve in water). Ants also can smell insanely good and not just pheromones, but everything. They can reliably find their way back across a very small bridge towards their nest, even without any pheromone track to guide them, just by following their antenna. When considering their size, ants are vastly better at smelling than dogs are and a whole new dimension compared to humans. With a good ability to smell there also comes a good ability to taste, which also happens with their antenna and ants are able to "taste" their way back home, too. Another important sense is (most insect's) ability to correctly sense, locate and navigate based on vibrations in the ground. Ants do not have any ears to hear sound, but they are very able to detect movement in the soil and can locate things around them in a relatively big area. It's not to be compared with spiders and aranae, who in general have a whole organ in their legs centered around detecting the slightest vibration in the ground even in the spectrum of nanometers, but still very useful to move around. So ants are not at all lost without pheromones, else ants that live nearby bodies of water, in heavy rain, or even those super cool submarine ants would be lost entirely. It is, however, their most reliable source of information and one they always come back to, even if it means remaking a track 100 times due to weather or disruptions. Relying on these rather "normal" or simply primitive senses, like seeing, smelling, tasting and sensing vibrations, is what ants used to do originally, too. Most relatively solitary ants that hunt for themselves and merely live together, or even those that are biologically the same and lack a queen caste entirely as everyone can bear children (the gamergates we talked about itt already), do that and tend to not used pheromones or even distrust them from time to time based on the situation. The more primitive you go, you usually also find by far larger and better functioning eyes, that work very similar to the eyes of a fly, which are able to see details in mid air during insane speed even when around them is nothing but rain. The ability to use and rely on pheromones is a cornerstone in not just ant, but hymenoptera evolution in general and comparably new. It becomes more obvious when you look at ant relatives, like bees or bumblebees, of which by far most species are not eusocial at all but living in solitary all their lives. Ants as a family moved towards eusociality and adapted to that, but other animals of the same branch have not and thus were unable to evolve any dependency on pheromones (although they do use them a lot, too, pheromones on their own are an old invention, but the meaning of how intensively they are used changed drastically over time).
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Aug 31, 2021 07:16
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Sorry I have criminally neglected this thread.BonHair posted:But a bit more on point, this is the beginning of my first garden season as a house owner, and my lawn has plenty of ants, which I would have thought would annoy me, but after reading this thread mostly fascinates and excites me. I'm in Denmark, and at a wild guess, my garden is full of garden variety lasius. I have a lot of fun watching them climb a tree, but I don't really understand what they're actually collecting, especially since the path seems pretty weak (15cm or so between workers at middle trunk, and they split up onto different branches). The colony seems to be directly below the tree. Are they into flowers or something? There doesn't seem to be aphids involved from what I can see. So in the wild ants are after two three things in general: Aphid poop, any kind of flower or fruit juice and honey. Aphids are widely spread and available, however not really a thing for all year and also they require incredible amounts of caretaking (ever tried to actually breed aphids? Basically impossible! Even though they happily destroy any and all vegetation in your home before leaving), honey is *the* absolute poo poo for ants and they literally would murder for that, however, bees are usually not very keen in sharing and they are the only producers out there, so they are abusing their monopoly. This leaves most ants in regular garden/forest/meadow/whatever to take whatever sweet liquid they can find, since as I posted itt somewhere before, ants cannot eat anything solid due to how their mouths work. Usually this ends up being any kind of nectar, juice, anything that contains relatively simple sugars and for that reason, you sometimes see ants collect flowers and plants that do not look like usual ant food. It's early in the year, so my guess is, they woke up from slumber fairly recently - especially assuming that in Denmark you guys tend to not go full summer mode in April - and thus just want to feed their babies and the queen with anything they can find. Another possibility is that they use flowers and plant parts of any kind to construct stuff. I've seen ants trying to build a permanent bridge to their nest using twigs and glueing together grass. So that's also very possible. BonHair posted:I'm also kinda into the idea of having a colony I can see the inside of, but between my wife and my curious/destructive four year old, I don't think I'm ready for a closed system in the house. I was thinking about a hybrid setup, where I have some sort of nest in an artificial environment (with glass sides), but using the actual garden as the outworld. My main issue is how I would go about it, since I would need for the nest to be in the dark for comfort. Currently I'm thinking something with a removable side with red glass, but are there good tried and true ways of doing what I want? It obviously needs to be weather proof and also somewhat resistant to being knocked over probably. Either way, before they went to sleep last November, I prepared a small patch of land nearby the driveway (I do not own this place nor the driveway, don't tell anyone it's basically city property I believe that I kinda stole), cleared it off some vegetation, made a small roof against rain and then moved my ants outside with their whole nest, making the actual outer world their outer world, while maintaining their nest as an option. They chose to stay, turned the nest and their surroundings in their winter quarter and they actually woke up last month, still residing in their original nest (that I made from concrete, remember, it's highly artificial). This worked out well so far! Looking at it now, I basically raised Mommy Ant into a full blown ant queen, kept them inside to help them grow and then moved them outside to explore and conquer the world. Ecologically speaking this is not really responsible, given that I did observe them taking over regular feral ants, killing bugs nearby and you know, stuff ants do, but I figured that since this is a major European city far away from actual natural habitats, a bit of cheating is probably not too unusual. Basically you can use any kind of artificial nest that is suitable for the ants you want to "keep" and make it so that rain does not cause it to fly away or wind to drown in water. Everything else is up to the ants, they are the architects of their own success and will adjust everything if they feel the need. There are some downsides to this kind of wild keeping: You have limited control, the ants rule the place and you can just hope they like it. If they decide that you suck, your setup sucks and this garden sucks, they can pack up and move away in a matter of a single night and never return. Plenty of reasons why this can happen, but you can minimize them by making sure they are actually happy with the place. Danger from external threats like birds, other ants, predators of any kind is obviously a thing. Ants will die, probably en mass, it's what nature does, but as long as the setup itself remains suitable and there is no major other ant colony nearby that endangers them, a well-grown colony will handle it. No guarantee of course, it just takes one smart bird to find a way to crack open the nest, eat the queen and they will inevitably wither and die off, but ants have plenty of ways to defend themselves and after all, there is a reason ants as a family of animals are so successful on the entire planet. There also are some major upsides: Basically no work at all. If you leave for a while, no matter, they will find their food. If you make them too dependant on what you offer, not providing that food will automatically lead to them leaving for greener pastures, but apart from that, there is nothing you really need to do, while always having the option to offer additional nutrition, clean water and so on. Parasites and diseases are pretty much impossible to have. A regular colony inside your home has limited space and limited options, leading to the danger of mite infestations, bacteria or fungi growing, whatever - when outside, this pretty much never happens, because the ants have a full garden of possibilities to fight that off. It is exceedingly rare for any kind of disease or parasite to fully wipe out a functioning colony in the wild, while this is a very real danger for regular ant keeping. So yeah, making this happen in your garden (or anyone else's garden, see myself) is easy and very possible. When taking a queen from your local nuptial flights (happening this year probably around July!), you also minimize any impact on your local animal kingdom. Of course, it still is an artificial influence that will cause changes, but since our regular gardens/ecosystems that exist around human settlements of any kind are already heavily impacted by us being there, you will not cause a local ecological catastrophe for providing ants a place to crash.
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Apr 26, 2022 16:44
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Depends on the species. Most ants are focused more underground and for them, those piles of dirt and soil are mostly just the place they dump the stuff on. Sometimes something funny happens though, when they do that and create rather large mountains of soil, they realize that what they created is also a fine place for brood or food storage due to the humidity and acidity level it may have. Then they sort of re-explore the artificial structure they created and start digging tunnels, there, too, so they can properly use it. Since eggs, larvae and pupae all have different requirements how they need to be stored, it is very common for pretty much all species to spread them across their territory as much as they see fit. Some species, especially wood ants (genus Formica is famous for that) figured that they can use their artificial architecture professionally though and they start building entire cities both underground and on the surface, made of soil, twigs, stones, whatever. Especially Formica are known to barely work underground at all at this point, as instead they build huge towers and mountains that they dig into, not unlike many termite species, that are known for their huge structures. A big Formica colony can build structures up to a meter tall and several meters in diameter, the most common sight of this are the big ant hills they construct in the forest.
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May 4, 2022 07:10
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post the ants imo
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May 25, 2022 17:36
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Woah what a beauty, yeah just leave her be, I'm sure she's already in a lot of stress right now. Especially because she has to take care of her babies while being busy looking so beautiful, that's like two jobs
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May 25, 2022 21:26
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Hmmm, maybe they got distracted by some sort of smell the leaf emitted, or some animal caused it to smell weird, so they wanted to check it out. Ants do not normally sleep outside of their nest, unless they are physically absolutely exhausted, and even then they only will stay still for a couple of minutes at best, as they do not have a circadian rhythm like we do, but their sleep consists out of very short, a few minute long naps spread over the entire day to preserve energy. Chances are they were hunting, sometimes ants adapt a stalking technique to hunt prey, similar to spiders, so they sit there and wait for something to show up before attacking. Depending on how cool it was, though, it's likely that they got a bit too cold on the leaf (maybe they got in touch with water before?) and it drained them of their heat. Since ants, like all insects, cannot regulate their own body temperature without external help, they will be forced to slow down if it gets too cold. At a certain temperature, they are unable to move entirely until the heat goes back up again, which is also causing their hibernation periods.
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Jun 2, 2022 09:56
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Oh absolutely! Ants keep a detailed mental map of their surroundings that also sort of remains visible/smellable for them as the colony keeps marking everything with specific pheromones, you can probably imagine this a bit like dudes running around, planting named signs on stuff around you. "Leaf A", "aphid bush", "nectar source" "danger don't go alone" and stuff like that, so if there were aphids before, they certainly will come back later to check on them again. Also, 8-10c is rather cold for them, they will be unable to move properly as soon as the temperature drops below 10c, while below 8c they begin to hibernate, if the temperature remains on that level for a few days. Anything from 4c downwards means their muscles stop functioning entirely. As it was rather cold last night, I can imagine that they were outside foraging as usual when it got too cold, so they cuddled up and waited for the sun to warm them back up.
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Jun 2, 2022 10:54
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Heh chances are that it's not a coincidence either! Often ants go out to collect aphids from all over and place them on a specific plant that convenient for them, they even motivate aphids to breed and protect their babbies to get more, while protecting them from danger. Once a plant is dying from the infestation, they move the aphids again. Big colonies even dig out healthy plants and carry them over for the aphids to feed on after their old home has withered.
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Jun 3, 2022 09:03
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Oh no, ants form natural supercolonies all the time, it's the mechanism that we don't yet know much about and why certain species are more likely to do it than others. For some species it is entirely common and normal for, during nupture flights, to get in foreign pregnant queen ants that get added to the colony and make their own babies and forming a supercolony that way. Two or more already grown colonies merging together is a lot rarer, but still happens, a common example would be the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, who do that so successfully that they manage to stand up against much larger and more deadly species due to their endless numbers. They are an invasive species all over the world now after being brought to every continent by humans, forming enormous internationally spanning megacolonies consisting out of thousands of supercolonies and billions of ants. Woodants of various species are also notoriously known to merge together and cooperate, some more than others, but it always depends on what level of cooperation you want to see in order to speak about a supercolony. Ants also form various symbiosis bondings with other species, most of them are plants, where, for example, the ants use their venom as weed killer, destroying growing competing plants in order to boost the growth of their home plants they live in. Leafcutter ants constructing vast mushroom gardens underground to cultivate fungi that they eat from is also a specific form of symbiosis. They also often cooperate with various insects, there are numerous insects that live inside the colonies of ants, either just neutral and tolerated, living off their trash (like the ant bug, Scydmaeninae) or cooperating with each other, where the bugs provide food in form of liquid sweets in exchange for protection and a home. Bees, as in, the usual eusocial honeybees you know, do not like to cooperate with ants a lot, because ants are obsessed with their honey and they do not feel like sharing, so usually it's a rather violent relationship, where ants raid bee hives for their honey and bees launch attacks on identified ant colonies. Often enough, however, ants get together with wasps to get into a war with bees, as the wasps like to kill and eat the bees and the ants provide ground cover and eat whatever falls down from the wasps. So cooperation with eusocial species is usually focused on ant-wasp relationships. Most bee species, however, are not eusocial but solitary bees. Only the honeybees you know and love form hives, they outnumber the other bees massively in pure numbers, but the number of species of bees that are not eusocial at all is by far higher than those that are. Ants sometimes get in touch with those bees, as they also collect pollen and can create sweet liquid stuff and they do not have to feed an entire hive, so they are more willing to share. There are instances where ants relocated their colonies to the breeding ground of solitary wasps or bumblebees (many of them nest in the ground in holes) to protect them and the bees supply the ants with nectar and other food.
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Jun 6, 2022 19:58
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