6 replies to this topic

[Aletheion]

Hello,

 

I'm not particularly interested in Ants, but something interesting happened to me the other day and I joined this group to share it.

 

I'm de-winterizing my RV and started hearing these clicks in the ceiling. It didn't take long to notice the large black carpenter ants who have decided to nest in my ceiling. Before I called an exterminator I decided to put out some gel bait to see if that gets the job done (sorry, this probably isn't the place to talk about killing ants).

 

The interesting bit: I was observing one of the first ants to visit the pool of gel on a bit of cardboard on the kitchen counter when it started making this clicking pattern with three distinct tones to it. Kind of tick tick tock tack, tick tick tock tack. I realized that on the other side of the RV room was another tick tick tock tack that the ant seemed to be conversing with. It was the hard drive in my computer. The drive was doing that thing that noisy drives can sometimes do when they're backing up a file or something and having that repeated read/write clicking sound. The ant was mimicking it. When the drive changed it's clicking tones a bit, the ant also changed it's tones to match.

 

I don't know if that's common, but I didn't see anything online about ants mimicking hard drives, but I thought it was pretty fascinating, so I thought I'd share. If it happens again, I'll get a video of it.

 

-Ale

 

[nurbs]

Sure you haven't been smoking or eating any colorful mushrooms found from the wilderness in your RV? 

 

Just kidding. Did it sound like this?

 

[Serafine]

Ants can communicate via sound in various ways - the most common ones are slamming the abdomen onto the surface below them (obviously works better the bigger the ant is) and stridulation which is done by rubbing parts of their hard exoskeleton against each other (this gives more of a screeching sound, many ants even have special spines on their thorax they can rub against the first segments of their abdomen). Leafcutter ants drum onto very nutritious leaves with their feelers which causes the whole twig to vibrate and leads other ants towards their position. Ants "communicating" with hard drives is probably an odd occurrence but very likely possible.

Edited by Serafine, February 2 2018 - 4:59 AM.

[FeedTheAnts]

I've heard that sound as well. One day I emptied out(or thought I did) an experimental formicarium that I had made. Over the next  few days I kept hearing a clicking sound coming from the direction of the shelf that it was on. It made me so curious that I ripped the formicarium apart and found ants inside that had worked there way into little nook that ants weren't supposed to be in, and there they had been clicking for days while being trapped. They were Eastern Black Carpenter Ants btw.

[BMM]

I had a C. pennsylvanicus queen that I believe was unfertilized. Every time I would check on her she would run to the cotton ball and start making clicking noises with her mandibles. I assumed it was something of a distress call.

[Jonathan21700]

Edited by Jonathan21700, February 2 2018 - 12:12 PM.

[Aletheion]

Thanks for the great replies! This was my first real encounter with a large number of ants (there were so many in my RV ceiling it sounded like it was raining outside) and it kinda makes me want to get an ant farm for my kids and learn more about it.

 

-Ale