I am going to share a little experiment with you, maybe this is of interest for some of you.
Last year on the UK veterinary conference, the UK supplier of the Emeraid veterinary special diets gave me a pack of their carnivore mix to try out with my ants.
I had told him that we had to wait for the diapause to be over (and for me not to forget about it).
Well, diapause is over!
And I remembered about this 3 days ago.
So I decided to do this little experiment this week.
The participating colonies are:
- Founder colony of Lasius niger
- Founder colony of Camponotus piceus
- Founder colony of Messor barbarus (harvester ants)
- Mature colony of Temnothorax nylanderi (acorn ants)
- Subadult colony of Messor barbarus (harvester ants)
So what did I do?
All my colonies were starved of protein for 2 days, so that they would respond with vigor to a new food item. Sugar water and seed (carbohydrates) were still offered during that time.
All colonies are supplied with enough water.
Today I mixed the food power with a bit of water to produce a paste, and also dribbled some water over it to moisten it afterwards (I thought it might have been a bit dry).
I placed the paste on each food dish for each colony.
Then I waited for an hour to see if there were any takers.
This is the result.
I might add further pictures tonight / tomorrow to see how much was taken.
The food dishes:
After one hour:
Lasius niger founder colony:
Camponotus piceus founder colony:
Messor barbarus founder colony:
Temnothorax nylanderi acorn ants colony:
Messor barbarus subadult colony:
To conclude:
After 1 hour, 2 colonies (Lasius and Camponotus founders) did not show any interest. In comparison, when fed crickets, they swarm the crickets pretty quickly.
The Messor barbarus colonies were definitely interested and eating. It is not their favorite, and they would swarm a cricket more, but they still eat it.
As for the Acorn ants- since these are not picky eaters and will eat bird poop in the wild, they pretty much loved it and came out in force.
