When I was first getting into ants I was worried they might smell.
The only things that smells are feeder crickets. Particularly if you have any dead bodies in there. Why do dead crickets stink so badly. I was sitting at my desk and kept smelling something. Turned out it was ONE dead cricket at the bottom of my wastebasket.
Anyway. I tend to sniff the outworlds just to check that I've gotten all the trash. Here is what I've found.
Pogonomyrmex occidentalis - Basically no smell except a very faint hint of something like formic acid and a kind of grain smell that's rather nice. That might be because they were mad that I took the lid off and were doing their "boiling display" where they run around all angry because something has disturbed them.
Formica Subsericea, Camponotus chromaides, Camponotus pennslyvanicus - Sand and nothing smell
Camponotus nicoborensis - kinda sweet sugar smell, I think they flooded their sugar feeder once and it's soaked into the sand. I should replace the sand.
Camponotus discolor - same faint sugar smell. Another case of needing to clean their sand.
Lasius neoniger - They were odorless, but now there is a stink in their outworld. I clean up their trash often... I may need to swap out a fresh outworld and transfer them to do a deep clean. I suspect they are burying dead crickets ... it's that same smell but not as strong. I have not found a protein for them where they don't have leftovers. They just eat a little of everything and don't always keep a clear trash pile. Maybe it's just hard for them since they are so small.
Any tips for keeping lasius outworlds tidy? They love to cover everything in sand... I hate to force them to live on plaster with just a sprinkle of sand ... but it might be needed since they have hidden all kinds of horrors under the sand... and they made a strange little nest where the sugar water spilled. Not looking forward to trying to herd them...
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