Daily Nature Fix: Ants! - More Human Than Human. (Original Photos)

Hello Steemit world.  This evening's daily nature fix is about one of my favorite animals in the insect world: Ants.  One of my previous DNF blogs was about the time I was able to observe leaf-cutter ants in Costa Rica (you can read it HERE), but this one is a little different.  It's about an experience I had early on in the keeping of my carpenter ant colony.  

   I've always liked ants.  When I was little I had a classic ant farm and I remember catching ants and putting them in there.  I think you were supposed to order the ants actually, but we never did that.  Regardless, the ants would always die in a week or two.  That's true wether you catch your own ants or order the company ones.  The reason for that is because the whole system is wrong.  All you get are worker ants and they, unfortunately, don't have very long lifespans.  About 3 years ago I came across a blog about keeping ants the proper way and it totally reignited my interest in the hobby.  The proper way to keep ants is to have a queen.  The entire colony revolves around here and she, in return, makes the colony happen.  I'll try to keep this one short and won't get into the intricacies of actually keeping an ant colony (I may do that in a post later, however) but instead just share this cool experience I had with them. 

     So the quick backstory is this:  During the nuptial flights of the large black ants you see here in Pennsylvania and the northeast US, I caught a young queen.  These are carpenter ants, camponotus pennsylvanicus. Throughout the spring, summer, and fall all of the different ant species will take flight in order to breed, that's what the "nuptial flights" are that I just mentioned. When you see a flying ant, it's either a new queen or a drone (a male just made to breed).  Anyway, I caught a fresh queen and set her up in a founding chamber.  In the matter of hours, she dropped her wings and in another day's time she started laying eggs!  A few weeks later, she had her first workers and the brood was getting pretty big.

^^^Here she is!

        They outgrew the founding chamber, so I moved them into a crude bucket setup.  In no time at all, they started outgrowing this as well so I decided to get serious.  I bought a formicarium.... which is a fancy name for "adult ant farm".   I bought mine from a company called Ants Canada and it's called an "omninest".  It was a real investment at nearly $100 with shipping, but it ended up being well worth it.  It's all clear acrylic with tons of chambers that are each accessible as well as an outworld and all kinds of attachments.  I hooked my bucket to the Omninest and thats when this cool experience happened.

^^^Top video of my bucket colony  connected to the fancy Omninest.

     So heres what happened.  I usually keep the colony in the dark under a black towel (they don't like the light much) when I'm not looking at it or doing maintenance, so when I wanted them to move out of the bucket, I covered the Omninest and put bright lights on the bucket.  It worked like a charm as I saw the workers getting uneasy.  What I saw next blew my mind.  As I was watching the colony, I saw a small gathering happen around the queen.  They were all communicating with one another, then one tiny worker headed over to the connection tube.  It cautiously made its way down the tube and then stepped foot into the new formicarium.  It continued to go into EVERY CHAMBER of the Omninest.  Every single one of them... slowly and thoroughly.  Once it checked out the final chamber, it quickly back tracked all the way back through the maze of tiny rooms and through the tube, back into the bucket.  It went face to face with a few other workers for a moment, communicating, and then they all started hauling everything into the new home!  Workers grabbed eggs and pupae and took them through the tube and dropped them into a chamber they picked out somehow.  The queen needed more persuading as I watched a worker grab her by the mandibles and actually pull her through the tube into the new nest.  I covered the it up with the black towel and let them do their thing for a while.  A few hours later I checked on them and they had all moved in!

^^^All moved in!

It's been almost three years since then and the colony is doing well. I many even buy another ominest so they can expand their operation.  

^^^So many workers!

     Seeing that single little ant literally perform a scouting mission has really stuck with me.  There's no doubt in my mind that it was anything less than a reconnaissance voyage.  It's incredible to think that such a tiny, simple creature would do such a thing. Risking one's self to better the colony - a colony that acts as a single organism. Perhaps they're not so simple after all?  This is just one behavior I have observed that would otherwise only be described as "human"

Thanks for reading and I'll see you tomorrow!  - Adam

***Daily Nature Fix is a daily blog showcasing the natural world.  It is all original content using photos, stories, and experiences from my own travels.***

Follow me to get your #dailynaturefix @customnature