2 replies to this topic

[futurebird]

Last year I filmed a single Camponotus discolor repeatedly picking up a bit of dead insect, climbing up the veridical wall of the outworld, dropping it, then on her way back to the nest she'd find it again. As if surprised or annoyed she pick it up once more, climb the wall, drop it again... and on and on.

It seemed like she thought she had walk enough steps that the offending bit of dead insect was far enough from the nest ... and so she put it down... but it didn't stay on the wall, naturally. So she would try again. She did this for HOURS. I got some video of it... then I simply removed the bit of insect since I couldn't stand to watch her anymore with such a futile task. 

Well guess what? There are a whole brigade of them now! For the past few days about 20-25 Camponotus discolor workers have been moving bits of cork they dug out of their cork nest up the wall, dropping them, and then doing it again and again. 

I just removed their trash pile, but I'm wondering if anyone else has seen this behavior. If I feed the colony they stop. They only seem to do it after they have totally gobbled all of their food and put the remains in the trash pile. I'm thinking I might go in and try to sweep up the dust they seem to want further from the nest... but they could take it to the other outworld instead, they have two outworlds and the main trash pile is in the one furthers from the part of the nest with the queen. 

They seem to be more amused climbing the wall over and over. 

Silly girls. 

[UtahAnts]

My hyatti colony used to do the exact same thing off of their rock cliff. I used to see dozens of workers right before feeding time scrambling up to the top of the rock and running back down to the base, to pick up more debris, never fully realizing that they had just dropped it 3 seconds ago. After I would feed them, they mostly stopped this cycle until the next feeding.

 

I don't know why they eventually stopped doing it entirely. Cleaning the outworld didn't seem to affect it that much, but maybe if I was more thorough they would have stopped sooner? Either way the behavior seemed to have disappeared for the last couple months. It does come in cycles though, the colony did this in their old outworld too. It usually starts with one worker and more joining, and then a steady decline in activity.

 

I'm guessing this cyclic behavior is in part caused by high levels of decay pheromone, given to individual pieces of debris by individual workers to identify trash. It could also be caused in part by the ants thinking their outworld is a part of the nest, which would explain why the workers are so desperate to clean the outworld of certain types of debris.

 

I find it interesting I've only seen this in my Camponotus colonies, something about their behavioral adaptations to survive in their environment

 

[futurebird]

Good to known I'm not the only one. 

I used some magnets to set up a little ledge that would catch the debris when they dropped them, but I'm starting to thing Camponotus are like cats. They would drop the item on the ledge ... then pick it up from the ledge and drop it off the ledge. They seem to like the whole "dropping item into an abyss" thing. My cat also enjoys things falling off ledges. LOL. 

Perhaps in the wild they would be dropping these items off a branch allowing them to fall far away? I will try to see if I can find any wild ants on garbage duty.