I'm not an entomologist, but a header like that can't help but add heft to whatever I've got to say about ants.
I object to the use of "forage" in relation to ants. To me, "forage" involves going out into the wild and rooting around in the underbrush, moving foliage aside to see what's underneath - hoping for nuts and berries, but maybe settling for snails or slugs if my culture has a way to make them palatable (I'm not sure mine does). Point is, it's a lot of work! Whereas to an ant, everything is so huge. They can't move foliage. But they don't have to, because since everything is so huge, all they have to do is keep walking over it, or across it, or up the side of it until they find something good to eat. Basically they're out for a pleasure stroll, and their whole path is strewn with goodies!
If you or I were out walking down a wide promontory, and we kept finding cupcakes that someone had left there, well is that what you would call "foraging"? Of course not! Yet this is all the ant does!
In fact, watch those cupcakes - chances are they are crawling with ants.
4 comments:
Being an ant isn't all cupcakes. I've seen two ants fight over a booger I dropped. Also, since everything is so huge, they have to be strong. It would be like us lugging a 3 ton booger 50 miles back to our respective abode, a hill in this instance. Not fun.
Well, life's hard for everybody. I'm not saying they have it easy, necessarily. Certainly ants are hard-working dudes!
I'm just saying, to me, what they do is not foraging. They just walk around tasting whatever they bump into and if it seems like food, they tear-ass back to the anthill laying down that formic-acid trace.
And then the reinforcements arrive to divvy it all up and cart it off, and that's even less like foraging! They just followed Mr. scout's plain trail.
Correction, they don't communicate with formic acid!
Unless, you know, biting is communication.
Spoiled little brats. Next time I see a crumb on the sidewalk I'm putting it under a leaf. Why should they get everything just handed to them?
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