12 replies to this topic

[Temperateants]

My carpenter ants just let food and waste fester near the moist cotton, and instead of cleaning the nest and moving the trash to near the entrance to make everyone's lives easier, they MOVE THE QUEEN AND BROOD to the entrance making everyone's lives a lot more difficult.

[FeedTheAnts]

Dying.....

[ANTdrew]

Let’s see...
Eating each other and their brood instead of the nutritious food you give them.
Nesting in the outworld instead of their fancy nest
Eating bird poop
Laying ten eggs on a good year
And DYING

[DDD101DDD]

Mine like putting trash on their honey. They also seem to enjoy having 3 separate trash piles.

[TennesseeAnts]

Mine really like to live in the outworld, using their nest as a foraging space. Usually only happens with founding colonies, though.

[AntsMaryland]

In the past when I've kept carpenter ant colonies, they tended to trash their cotton balls… tangle the strands around the cocoons (even when substrate was provided)… and then be unable to open them because of the strands. 

[ponerinecat]

Dying, eating new callows, strangling themselves in cotton, swimming in honey, painting with honey, etc.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Eating brood over the winter, apparently starting with the biggest oldest ones that were ALMOST DONE PUPATING.

 

Refusing to recognize fruit flies as food. They treated them more like invading ants. One colony eventually figured it out, thank goodness.

 

Refusing to recognize cut up mealworm as food.

 

Drinking too much sugar water and apparently throwing it up (???) all over the test tube. Or at least that's what looks like happened....

[Temperateants]

Eating brood over the winter, apparently starting with the biggest oldest ones that were ALMOST DONE PUPATING.

 

Refusing to recognize fruit flies as food. They treated them more like invading ants. One colony eventually figured it out, thank goodness.

 

Refusing to recognize cut up mealworm as food.

 

Drinking too much sugar water and apparently throwing it up (???) all over the test tube. Or at least that's what looks like happened....

My formica look like they do that, they ate a whole bunch of honey and the next day there were brown goo spots on the tube, same with some of my camponotous too. My carpenter ants thought the biscuit beetle was their own so instead of obliterating it like my tetras they sort of just stationed it near the brood and nothing happened. At worst, some of the colonies just dumped it near the moist cotton MOVING THE ENTIRE NEST INSTEAD, and didn't even eat it.

[OhNoNotAgain]

My formica look like they do that, they ate a whole bunch of honey and the next day there were brown goo spots on the tube, same with some of my camponotous too. My carpenter ants thought the biscuit beetle was their own so instead of obliterating it like my tetras they sort of just stationed it near the brood and nothing happened. At worst, some of the colonies just dumped it near the moist cotton MOVING THE ENTIRE NEST INSTEAD, and didn't even eat it.

 

This is probably why it's harder to have a "Dumb things my Tetramorium ants love doing" thread. So smart some people think they're boring 

[TheMicroPlanet]

Not something my camponotus colony (which is just a queen...) has ever done, but there's one dumb thing i've seen camponotus do in the wild...

 

So there's a hummingbird feeder outside that's put out for the hummingbirds (shocking, I know), which means it's filled with sugar water. The way the birds access the sugar water is by sticking their beaks into these tiny holes; a pretty standard hummingbird feeder. Anyway, along come some camponotus workers hungry for something sweet, and they start crawling into the holes to drink. Unfortunately, the failed to realize that if they drank too much, they'd be too fat to get out of the holes. Needless to say, I found a few workers who died trying to get out; one of them was in an upright position with just the head and mesosoma sticking out; pretty creepy. So yeah, that's something dumb my local carpenters do.

[OhNoNotAgain]

Not something my camponotus colony (which is just a queen...) has ever done, but there's one dumb thing i've seen camponotus do in the wild...

 

So there's a hummingbird feeder outside that's put out for the hummingbirds (shocking, I know), which means it's filled with sugar water. The way the birds access the sugar water is by sticking their beaks into these tiny holes; a pretty standard hummingbird feeder. Anyway, along come some camponotus workers hungry for something sweet, and they start crawling into the holes to drink. Unfortunately, the failed to realize that if they drank too much, they'd be too fat to get out of the holes. Needless to say, I found a few workers who died trying to get out; one of them was in an upright position with just the head and mesosoma sticking out; pretty creepy. So yeah, that's something dumb my local carpenters do.

 

I don't know if it's THAT dumb ... I've heard stories, and possibly even saw on TV a case of catching monkeys or primates by putting something they REALLY want in a hole (I seem to remember someone doing it with salt). But when they grab it, their hand can't fit back out. Then you can pretty much walk up to them and capture them because they're panicking and yet won't open up their hand to let go. (Definitely sounds like stupid human tricks where people keep doing something even knowing it's dangerous....)

 

I actually kind of wonder if stupidity can ironically be a sign of intelligence or adaptability? Meaning, if something has to be learned instead of just understood by instinct, it might show the creature has a greater capacity for learning than an equivalent animal that just knows to do things but is less adaptable. But then, that wouldn't really explain Tetramorium's success all over the place. Maybe Camponotus are just dumber.... lol

[NickAnter]

Dying and eating brood. I've only ever seen two live Camponotus queens, so I don't have much experience.