The ants appear to be using the water dish I have in the ant farm as a dumping ground for dead ants. Here is a picture of eight ant bodies floating in the water, one of which seems to be a queen ant with wings.
This day I changed out the old bottle caps with ones with new water and one with a mosquito and some shredded pork. The mosquito was bugging me the previous night and I zapped it with a mosquito zapper. The ants really liked the mosquito because it was gone in about five minutes with just the legs remaining in the bottle cap. The ants also seemed to like the shredded pork, but definitely not as much as the mosquito.
The ants seem to be settling in to their new home fairly nicely. I've spotted some very small eggs, which makes me suspect that I do have a queen ant in there somewhere. I am starting to see little eyes forming on the pupae. Some of them are starting to form clearly visible body parts like heads and legs and are starting to change to a brown color. Very interesting.
I recently did a project concerning leaf cutter ants in the rainforest. I was testing the alarm reaction by putting a slurry of crushed ants near the foraging trail to see how they reacted. I noticed the ants, on several occasions, taking the bodies somewhere. I was never able to figure out that behavior. This is interesting.
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I think it is the king ants that have wings but I maybe wrong haha
ReplyDeleteI think they drowned in your glass instead. I noticed this when I leave a glass of water on my desk at night (I had lots of ants around the place). I think they want to get to the water, but die trying.
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