Ants are the ****. We live on earth at their pleasure.

Every summer, I’ll put out a bit of honey or sugar water just to see how many species will show up. It’s also i great way to see ants interact with each other and with other species.

I but some sugar water on our sidewalk, close to the edge of the lawn, where there’s a heavily populated trail of minuscule pavement ants. Within a minute, it had been discovered and the call had gone out for extra laborers.

Half an hour in, and the splotch of liquid is surrounded by ants, lined up like lions at a watering hole, and just as menacing. Numbers are everything to ants. These tiny ants are able to throw a lot of workers at a resource quickly, to protect it from most competitors, and to maximize their share before something they can’t drive off shows up.

They’ll get as much as they can, filling their back segments with liquid, then distribute it evenly to every member of the colony by spotting it directly into their sisters’ mouths. Hot.

As is, though, the sugar is a no go zone for other ants, wasps, and any other insect unlucky enough to trundle by. There are some quite large red ants circling the perimeter, but they’re biding their time. Sure, they’re easily five times the size of the pavement ants, but pavement ants scoff at your size comparisons.

It’s all about the numbers. If a red ant gets pushy, it’s going to be swarmed, stretched out and pinned down, bitten, stung (or sprayed with acid), until it runs off or gets carried back for dinner. Just being in the area is a risk, as the smaller ants aren’t going to pass up a chance at a kill.

The next day, the spot had dried to a patch of crystallized sugar. The pavement ants apparently have had their fill, as they’re in the area but ignoring the resource. The red ants have the spot in their control now, and they’re gnawing away. There’s about ten ants, and they’re not in an orderly row like the PAs.

I put an ice cube on the sugar, and it’s immediately attacked. One ant is clearly trying to bite and sting the cube, and I have ants on my arm, even though I touched the cube for barely an instant.

I think this species is a parasitic sugar ant species. Likely, a queen found a colony of black sugar ants (“wood ants” in my area), killed the resident queen, suborned it’s workers, and started raising her own offspring. Once she has enough of her own, they’ll ambush and kill the slave ants. Metal!

Once the sugars wet again, the red ants get serious. They’re big enough to see their back ends swell with liquid. You can predict which ones are ready to leave and make the dangerous trek back to the nest.

https://youtu.be/LdttBUQT5tM

Hot ant on ant action!

https://youtu.be/PXo2Zdhh7m0

A stinger? Anthropod, please!

I'm amazed at how fast a little swarm of ants will show up if the smallest bit of food isn't cleaned off the kitchen counter. Different types show up depending on the kind of food particle. Yet scouts are rarely seen when everything is clean. I think they must be in the walls and be able to smell the food from a distance.


PairTheBoard

Most likely. If they’re in the walls, they’re likely finding a lot of protein from the other bugs. Sugar would be hard to find, but more available in the kitchen. Outside nests might even be close enough for a scout to hit your counters sporadically- it’s higher variance but the payoff could be huge. I have to think finding a drop of maple syrup on the counter could be a pretty big game changer for a small or new colony.

Your neighbors would like you to stop feeding the ants.

Ants laugh at your elevated nest and your “stingers.”

https://youtu.be/bUNKQqCRFuQ

http://www.pbs.org/program/eo-wilson/

E.O. Wilson also wrote a book about Ants. They will soon rule the Earth.

Pretty much everything you always wanted to know about ants but were afraid to ask:

That was the best damn post on ants this entire site has ever seen! Good job, thanks, I'll probably read it again.

Very well written and very interesting; Ant wars: serious-science.org/ant-wars

Teaser Section below from above link:

Army Ants vs Leaf Cutters

One species of AA in the new world tropics with some regularity invades mature colonies of leaf-cutter ants. AA and leaf-cutter ants in the new world tropics are two pinnacles of ant evolution in the sense that they have very large colonies, are highly socially sophisticated, have lots of division of labor. When AA attack mature leaf-cutter ants colonies, soldiers of both species line up a face off- leaf-cutter soldiers against AA soldiers – and engage in absolutely cataclysmic battles that can go on for days before the AA finally break through the defense and go down to the leaf-cutter nest and pillage the brood.

The leaf-cutter ants have giant nests, large colonies and millions of workers in a single colony. They have huge mass chambers, with an enormous portion lying underground. They produce very large body soldiers: a soldier can weigh hundreds of times what a small worker weights. The soldiers really can’t do much work for the colony – they are massive, they are very expensive and their purpose has been a bit of a mystery to ant biologists.

However, when AA biologists started seeing raids of the AA species into leaf-cutter ant colonies, they saw how leaf-cutters respond to invasions. Great numbers of the huge leaf-cutter soldiers – thousands of them – were recruited to the front lines to try to defend against AA. Almost in all of the cases, eventually they are not successful, the AA end up breaking through. But, presumably, that is what the leaf-cutter soldiers are for: defending against AA. This is another piece of evidence for the idea that wars or battles with other ants are an important factor in ant evolution.

If you look at how prey ants respond to AA raids there is a wide range of responses. Some species fight back, for others the first few AA workers that show up lead to an immediate panic reaction with the entire prey ant colony evacuating the nest. What they usually do is they grab the babies, the offspring, and run out and carry themselves to a distance. There they stand and wait. After the AA depart, the prey ants can go back into the nest.



Ant War video....

That out in the open time must be pretty harrowing. Spiders, mantids, centipedes, scorpions, etc, etc. Not to mention the birds, mammals, reptiles...one anteater or possum and it’s carnage

Encountered a beautiful three inch preying mantis this morning.

If ants are the wolves of anthropoids (and they are) mantids are the tigers. Stone psycho killers, no pansy stingers, poisons, or webs, just spikes, forearms, and mouthparts. If this one makes it to full size, it will happily eat hummingbirds and tree frogs. It is simply down for whatever.

Still, if it ran into a patrol of those red ants from the OP and didn’t fly away immediately, it’s dead.

https://youtu.be/OLwewn6M0J8

Remember as a kid dropping a bag of popcorn (here in the UK our popcorn is usually sweet...) and coming back to find a row of ants each carrying off pieces of popcorn that were about 20x their size! God knows how they got it down into their nest, but pretty sure they managed it somehow.

Juk

I hope American ants invade Canada and chop it to bits!!