Simply putting colored paint on a few ants has let me discover that individual ants have certain spots they like best — Tulip likes to be on the highest point of this branch. If I don’t see her there I get worried. She’s a little camera (light) shy so documenting how often I see her in the same spot has been a challenge. She has preferred this spot for at least a whole month. Here are a few times I caught here there.
I've also discovered that carpenter ants take the bugs I feed them, which are much larger than them, and haul them up into their little "tree" (
5" high bit of driftwood) I guess they don't want other ants to steal their prize. Kind of like a leopard. Or like a pack of cooperative leopards.
They will also take the food into a special room in the nest, but only if it's small enough to fit through the small entrance hole otherwise they stash it in the tree.
@futurebird haha 'cooperative leopards' you mean cheetahs. hmmm dunno if cheetahs climb trees tho. maybe they dont cuz they eat communally? i think they hunt communally
@futurebird i remember feeding my ants one summer on disabled fruit flies. Aphaenogaster, Crematogaster, Paratrechina, Brachymyrmex, who else did i have? Tapinoma? Lasius? so long ago...
anyway they were all so different in how they would deal with and dispatch their prey! the tiniest, the Paratrechina were the most fearless. some of the bigger ones would approach more tentetively!
In this species the works live around 18 months, though Tulip is pushing two years by now I think. The queens can live for up to three decades, though 8 years is more typical. Their queen is 4 going on 5 this summer.
It's the summer generation of honeybees that have shockingly short lives, even for insects, but especially for such dynamic intelligent insects.
Ants have more typical insect lifespans... but also really push the upper limit with the queens. There was a queen of a Lasius Niger colony kept in the UK that was confirmed to be 38!
We don't really know how long the queens can live.
Well she does seem to spend about half of her time in the wooden annex nest sleeping in a pile with her sisters... though I don't know if ants see work in the same way that we do. I think they just get sad when they don't have "urgent tasks"
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