4 replies to this topic

[AntaholicAnonymous]

I've noticed an off looking ant with odd behavior and I'm not sure what that's about.

Those are Manica rubida and the worker on the glass looks different from the two on the ground to the right.
It's gaster is more orange and swollen and she is running around and constantly running as high up as she can.
She sprints like she's in a panic.

The gaster might look like she drank sugar water but their gasters usually are not as bright orange and more cone shaped if filled with water.
I observed an ant like this last year and it died after a day of running up on walls constantly. There is no difference in color above or below and it's not just the daylight, I checked for that.

I wonder if that's a parasite housing in the gaster directing the ant to go up high on trees as they sometimes do.
If that's a parasite it never spread out from that one ant that had it in the past.
I might remove this one to keep it quarantined.

[TestSubjectOne]

I'm going to guess that the ant is just close to death and is trying to run away from the nest to save others the work of carrying her corpse out - a normal behavior for many species. Her physical changes might be a sign of age, or a disease that she is trying to isolate from her colony. The fungus you're thinking of, Cordiceps, is native to the tropics so it's not the cause unless there are similar ones that I haven't heard of.

[AntaholicAnonymous]

Oh OK thanks.
I'm aware of cordiceps that wasn't my suspicion.
I've seen snail parasites making them crawl up high for the birds to eat them and spread the parasite and I thought that might be something similar maybe.

I've seen the walk off when they're dying before and it's usually not a whole day sprint but more of a slow tired looking walk.

I'm glad I have a lot of springtails and isopods hollowing out corpses so I don't have to worry about diseases spreading

[ANTdrew]

My ants all exhibit this behavior when they are close to death. Fascinating how they know to remove themselves from the superorganism.

[AntaholicAnonymous]

Just goes to show how selfless they are.
It's as if I'm dying and I use my last strength to shovel out my grave, jump in and wait it out. lol

I still wonder what the weird gaster is about and why it was so orange.