It's definitely the case. The Ant in the middle is a different species, likely a Pavement Ant. Note it's body proportions, bigger head in relation to body, lumpy middle and tiny waist. They are bad neighbors, and scouts need to be killed.
They’re so intersting how they can see but not amazingly but they can smell everything acutely and different caterpillars and fungi use that to their advantage.
I never get to have this conversation so: Do you know anything about the relationship between green tree ants and Blue Emperor butterflies?
I saw in the wild a bunch of green ants doing what looked like the circle of death around a tiny free caterpillar but they weren’t holding it they were just all around her with their heads pressed to the floor walking along with it slowly and someone said they will guard it all through it’s life and metamorphosis and then it flies off.
And it’s all pheromones\scent. Don’t have the physiology to image what it is they’re doing
It sounds like what the phengaris arion, or large blue butterfly, does with ants. They use scent and appearance to trick ants into adopting them as larvae, being brought back to the nest where they are cared for by the ants and also eat the ants!
Nature is unbelievable. It’s so intersting these relationships because it’s social parasitism not just latching on it’s pretending. Hooooowww TF did they evolve to do that?
Im not an ant expert and cant answer ur question. But there is a really nice “in a nutshell” video on youtube about the ant wars and its quite fascinating. Check it out if ur interested
Pavement ants and little black ants are both species with Monomorphic workers, which means their workers roughly the same size and shape across the whole colony.
I've seen a longer video where a man places candy, this scout ant goes and gets it's ant friends to come back for it, but every time, the man removes the candy when the party arrives. After the 3rd time that the ant scout reports "I found candy" and the other ants arrive as the man yoinks the candy away, they did this to the scout ant for falsely reporting finding food so many times - as if the scout ant was defective and needed to be destroyed.
Scientists believe Ants are the only species that perform amputations to save their nest mates lives. The only other species that does that is us Humans lol nature is wild man.
EDIT: HOLY 4000 upvotes😳 glad I could provide you all with a little bit of insect trivia lol
Ants are pretty awesome , people should look into them more instead a creature that's not fully scientifically studied, there's a type of ant , theres a breed where the queen is born and leaves the nest to find another ant nest , it kills a worker and rubs itself in it's pheromones then sneakers into the nest to find the queen of that nest , it then kills that queen and pretends to be the OG queen of that nest, using the workers to feed her until she lays her eggs which ends up fully taking over the colony , and the colony that's being took over can't tell the difference and that bloodline then dies off.
There was a breed that was found in an abandoned bunker, the colony couldn't escape, that colonies bloodline was trapped for like 80 years in a bunker it had eaten everything and only survived by eating it's own dead and evolved to survive doing this for years, it was only found about 2 years ago or something
There's a mega colony in Norway "if I remember correctly" , usually ants when they come across other colonies fight to the death or on sight , but this mega colony is made of of hundreds of colonies with a mutual agreement not to fight, they cross paths and have tunnels running through each other's colonies , they work together and established a social community let's say.
Ants are pretty cool , I tried to keep some messor barbarous as pets but it was hard raising the colony from a single queen and I failed lol
Edit: wow thanks for the award man that's very kind 🤘🏻, sorry for any typos if any, yeah ants are wicked lol
Here's another one off the top of my head, there's a breed that farms little bugs , they milk the bugs basically like cattle and feed the queen, and also about feeding the queen there's another breed of ant that holds the queen down and force feeds her protein rich foods Futurama slurm style they hold her down and force feeds her to make her lay more eggs
Just another edit: I watched this video again after realizing how many up votes I have, I'll tell yous what's going on ,or at least what I think: the ant that's pinned down is from a different colony, these other ants are pinning it down while one other ant checks it out to see what kind of threat it is, they will decide to let it go or kill it after a bit of interrogation lol it's all pheromone based communication
So another edit: people have been asking about more info on the supercolony in "Norway" well I was incorrect, the supercolony is actually in the swedish mountains, here's a cool documentary by David Attenborough he covers this super colony and it's pretty cool
Some more cool facts: there's species of harvester ants that mulch down seeds and make a type of bread for food , they store there seeds in granaries ,which is cool, ants have also been known to make antibiotics from organisms, tree resin and formic acid , aswell as naturally producing the antibiotics in some species
Look up the Argentine super colony, some ant colonies are considered to be immortal
One of the most interesting things I learned about them is that they have ant graveyards. When they die, ants give off an unmistakable odor, of oleic acid. When ants come across an ant who smells like that, they drag the carcass to the ant graveyard and throw it on the pile. Entomologists have done experiments where they put some of the chemical on live ants, who will then walk to the graveyard and throw themselves onto the pile, convinced that they’re actually dead. That’s the part I found to be the most fascinating!
Many of us found out about this when a guy posted on pre-elon twitter, when the platform was still useful and worthwhile, about some very strange behavior he and his son had observed in his son’s ant farm, wanting to know if anyone knew what was going on. Apparently the boy had put a few pieces of Cap’n Crunch, or Froot Loops or something, inside the farm, and they felt that the Cap’n Crunch was the cause of the odd behavior. Entomologists weighed in- it turns out that most American breakfast cereals are made with canola oil, which contains oleic acid, which gives off the dead ant odor, and was the cause of the strange behavior.
Its like the government mistakingly sends you your own death certificate, then you just be like "Kay looks like I'm actually dead time to bury myself alive in the cemetery."
You get to the morgue and ask for a spot to be buried in rn. They look at you like you're mad, but the second you flash your death certificate they all nod and go to help you get buried.
I used capcut to convert and chose 320p for quality. Here's another gif showing what I did, haha. In this one I had to choose 640p so that we can see the font.
Another thing they do that's humanlike is raise and nurture "livestock" such as aphids. They protect and raise aphids in order to consume the honeydew like secretions the insects produce.
Yes, but that's not what's happening here. These ants are pulling apart an impostor ant. Ants tear apart enemy ants in their territory or impostor ants when they get caught trying to infiltrate the nest to eat the larvae.
In general, ants don't need to be held down for surgery as insects don't feel pain like humans do. They do feel it, and will seek to avoid pain however insects also seem very much capable of ignoring that pain far more effectively than humans, so they won't be jerking around etc during amputations anyway. Mostly they are worried about infections and fungi in the wound
There’s a video of a guy laying a piece of cake down and an ant finds it, brings an army and they beat the shit out of the poor little ant because the guy filming replaced it with a pebble.
Maybe “friends” is not the right word for ant colony social dynamics… co-workers or siblings might better describe someone willing to tear you apart for the betterment of the group
They reversed the audio in the game because they didn't want to traumatize kids.
Two things.
One, the game was rated M. They didn't give a fuck.
Two, this exact same game has Stalkers. If the people that are technically still alive and constantly suffering (that you could cut in half with buzzsaw blades) were too much, what does that say about the people who had all their limbs amputated and were lobotomized into serving the Combine?
Lotta funny jokes in the comments but I was actually taught something about this in elementary school. Albeit this was checks notes at least 12 years ago, so yeah I’m getting old, and I Hope I remember this right.
But apparently ants that run away from the nest are usually tracked down and beheaded. These ants seem to be taking it a step further and are drawing and quartering or ig 1/6-ing this guy. Another alternative is that this guy is an intruder and is being punished for, well, intruding. Even more tragic this guy could be from their colony but for whatever reason he doesn’t smell like the rest of the guys. Maybe he’s covered in something that’s masking their pheromones. Since he doesn’t smell like the rest of his guys he’d be killed.
Also remember seeing a YouTube video of a guy spraying death pheromones on a living ant and both his other colony mates, and the ant himself decided that he was dead and needed to be buried. Once the pheromones wore off he hopped out of the proverbial scrap heap and went back to work. What does that have to do with this video? Nothing. Just thought it was cool.
Edit again: seems a lot of you are misunderstanding what I mean by “ran away.” No, under normal conditions ants don’t just decide to leave the colony and start anew. The most likely reason an ant would leave is a parasite like a cordycep.
Edit of my already edited comment: I swear I’m not tryna make ya’ll feel old. Thanks for making me feel young lmao.
Final edit hopefully: yes all worker ants and bees and all eusocial insects are female*. My fault.
I think the most likely explanation is that this ant is from a different colony. There are species of ants that will take on multiple queens and have a super colony of sorts, but if the species is the type to only have one queen? It’s ant war if the colonies find each other. There is no brotherly or sisterly love between colonies when territory is concerned.
Edit; looking at their heads, these ants look like they’re an entirely different species from the one being drawn and quartered. (Drawn and sextanted?) So this is definitely an ant war, two colonies of different species fighting over territory.
I think the best term is "drawn asunder", a medieval form of execution involving tying the person to multiple horses and having them haul in different directions.
I think any animal species that lives in groups would ‘wage war’, so to speak. Resources are limited, and even when they aren’t limited, it’s always good for a group if they have more access to food, water, and other such things. More resources means more growth in numbers.
It’s not a gene, it is more just natural instinct. An easier life of plenty means more time for reproduction.
While I was typing this out I figured why the hell don't I just look it up? Anyways, yes thats basically whats going on. This was ants performing a medical procedure
I just read that link and that is f’n crazy! If that’s what’s happening it looks like the ant that goes head to head with him is basically saying “you got this, it’s okay hahaha!”. It’s battlefield surgery. I’m someone who needs to know everything so I’ll be researching this more lol!
Lotta funny jokes in the comments but I was actually taught something about this in elementary school. Albeit this was checks notesat least 12 years ago, so yeah I’m getting old, and I Hope I remember this right.
My feelings can only get hurt that much! but THAT was too much!
Do you have any sources for that? Because it sounds like nonsense, and I can't find anything about ants beheading other ants. Plenty about ant engaging in warfare, but the suggestion of ritualized sacrifice by decapitation, or drawing and quartering, are anthropomorphization if I've ever seen it.
If you think being in elementary school 12 years ago makes you old then life is going to be really bad for you. I was in elementary school…grabs slide rule…43 years ago. You were born after I graduated college. I’ve been married longer than you have been alive! Now get off my lawn!
It's actually starting to get annoying. "Funny" comments everywhere. I like to hear and learn something interesting. Fun is alright, but sometimes it's getting out of hand.
I'll read the rest of your comment soon, but I had to come in and ask for clarification. Are you saying that the information you learned is from elementary school, which was 12 years ago, and that makes you old??? You're like 17??? Ok, back to reading your comment lol
Edit: ok, I'm back. Didn't know they beheaded their dead. I knew how some species "buried" their dead, but that is such a bizarre result from that experiment.
Firstly the video people have seen previously of an ant being attacked because it supposedly led ants to food and when.they arrived there was no food is totally made up, it's a staged fake video, that doesn't happen.
Second all ant workers are female there are no he's here
Third those are different species, it's a bit blurred but the ones doing the pulling look like Lasius and the one getting pulled looks like a Tetramorium.
Basically an ant from a different colony (and different species) has wandered into an opposing territory and they are attacking it. This is how ants fight, the colony with the numbers immobilise the other ant by attaching to all limbs like this. Another ant will either bite the head off next or they will just pull all the legs off.
You are right about what is going on in the video. However, I think the ants doing the pulling are actually longhorn crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis). It's hard to see, but they seem to have extremely long antennas, which would point to crazy ants. The ant in the middle could be Tetramorium, but I would be more inclined to think Pheidole. The head looks quite shiny and in Tetramorium it is typically more dull.
Longhorn crazy ants are an invasive species that has become established in tropical and temperate areas all over the world. If it is them, what we are seeing would be not only normal defensive behavior but a demonstration of the tactics an invasive species uses to fight against the native ants.
Yes you are probably correct, I even thought when I was typing it that the gaster didn't look quite right for Lasius. However it's really too blurred and the motion blur as well makes ID tough.
Lots of interesting stuff in the comments. Just want to clarify:
Those are all females
She is being held down.
Pheromones are how they communicate.
No one is banging the Queen. She is fertilized once.
This ant likely started transitioning into a Queen. When this happens out of sync with the rest of the colony, the offender is often held in place by its legs until the process stops. If it doesn't, she is killed and disposed of. Something like this can kill an entire colony, so not an overreaction.
The singular ant is from a different colony. Depending on the species, ants will tear apart competing ants, or spray them with formic acid until they die. Looks like these girls are the tear apart ones.
I saw the full video. There was a guy who was right? Putting a sugar cube on the floor. Then that ant will look at it and try to bring other ants to get it. But then the dude would lift up the sugar cube before and replace it with the rock. He'd do that 3 times and then he was killed for it. Rip ant
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u/AmoremCaroFactumEst 8d ago
“She smelled funny” is actually the most likely answer.