5 replies to this topic

[Works4TheGood]

Yesterday, I put a small piece of tinfoil in the outworld of my Aphaenogaster fulva and laid some cotton on it. Then, I added some sugar water to the cotton, which it very quickly absorbed. However, I must have spilled a droplet on the foil. A few hours later, workers were putting sand in the droplet until there was none. 24 hours latter, they had placed sand around much of the cotton too. Does anyone know what the purpose is of this behavior?

When I was a young kid (8 maybe), I once put peanut butter out to watch what ants would do with it. Surprisingly, they covered the peanut butter with dirt! Is this the same instinct as what happened in the paragraph above?

[dspdrew]

I think they just don't like wet or sticky stuff. This behavior is very common.

[LC3]

Lots of ants do that, possibly to prevent evaporation or to prevent drowning. I don't know.

[Lessian]

This explains a hell of a lot about one of my queens!  Every time I gave her sugar water, I would later find it covered in cotton.  I thought she was just being incredibly messy and tracking it around everywhere.

[Serafine]

Ants often cover their food. It's not entirely sure why but probably for various reason - it hides the food from competitors, it prevents rapid evaporation (food doesn't dry out), it prevents ants from getting sucked up by the liquid (mostly a problem for smaller ants) and it makes in easier for the ants to actually drink from the dirt or cotton (due to capillary action cotton and similar materials work like a straw). Some ants even use absorbing tools to transport liquids into the nest (this is mostly done by ants that lack inflatable gasters and so are physiologically very limited in their transport capacty).

[AnthonyP163]

Yesterday, I put a small piece of tinfoil in the outworld of my Aphaenogaster fulva and laid some cotton on it. Then, I added some sugar water to the cotton, which it very quickly absorbed. However, I must have spilled a droplet on the foil. A few hours later, workers were putting sand in the droplet until there was none. 24 hours latter, they had placed sand around much of the cotton too. Does anyone know what the purpose is of this behavior?
When I was a young kid (8 maybe), I once put peanut butter out to watch what ants would do with it. Surprisingly, they covered the peanut butter with dirt! Is this the same instinct as what happened in the paragraph above?

Probably to make sure that the sugar water stays and doesn't evaporate too fast. It probably evolved, and they realized it helped them to save food.