Farmer ants and their aphid herds
www.westcoastseeds.com
Several species of ants have a special symbiotic relationship with aphids- they farm them! Aphids feed primarily on the sap from plants and secrete a liquid called honeydew. This secretion is very sugar-rich, and quite favoured by ants as a food source. As a result, a system has been hashed out by these insects wherein the ants herd the aphids around to the juiciest parts of plants, protect them from predators, and carry them into their nests at night and for winter. In return they are allowed to ‘milk’ the aphids- stroking the aphids with their antennae, coaxing them to secrete their honeydew which is then lapped up by the ant. In every species of ants, workers will specialize in different roles such as nursing or foraging to fulfill the needs of the colony - in farming ants, some workers will specialize just in shepherding and caring for the aphids! There's even some evidence that ants build pastures of a sort, to keep their herded aphids in. When the colony departs one nest site to form another at a new location, they will carry an aphid egg with them, to establish a new herd and maintain their resources. If you are wondering what all the fuss for honeydew is about, you should know that many areas of the world, most notably Germany’s Black Forest, actually tend bee colonies that collect and make honey from honeydew, resulting in a stronger tasting, darker product. Ants certainly are the world’s oldest, and smallest, farmers. Click here to watch some footage of this process. @AdaMcVean
    • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      11 months ago

      This is so frickin’ cool. I’ve been learning the occasional interesting fact about ants for nigh on 30 years and here I am, still finding out cool things about these amazing little creatures.

  • gullible@kbin.social
    5·
    11 months ago

    Dealing with this is so annoying. Not because it’s difficult to handle, though it is, but because I have to exterminate multiple Argentine ant colonies in rapid succession despite loving ants. Please just let me garden in peace, ants. :(

    • LillyPip@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Could you give them something that doesn’t harm the plants, that might lure them where they won’t bother you, and that won’t make the problem worse in a different way?

      Maybe they’d like something you normally throw away in relatively small quantities that won’t attract something worse or poison anything?

      e: disclaimer: IANAG. I am terrible with plants.

      • gullible@kbin.social
        5·
        11 months ago

        Argentine ants are altogether too numerous to meaningfully distract or redirect for long. If there’s a new ____ source, they’ll find a way to dive in and then produce a sister colony like 40 feet away. My options amount to either spreading poison, thereby killing a non-negligible sum of rabbits and neighborhood dogs, or killing the ants. I can always grow poisonous or undesirable veggies, but I can only take so many years of mustard, parsley, garlic, and tomatoes.

      • LillyPip@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        31·
        11 months ago

        Kinda makes you rethink how we typically define ‘society’.

        Like it’s far more fundamental than we think, and we very narrowly define it by too complex criteria. And we’re too invested in making sure that definition stays narrow enough that we can justify harming others.

        (Sorry, I’d normally put that in a slightly more cheerful way, but I’m just so tired.)

        • lol3droflxp@kbin.social
          15·
          11 months ago

          Humans don’t just wake up one day and start farming fungi their whole lives and never stop or reproduce because something in their brain constantly tells them to. There’s some profound difference between ant “society” and human society.

            • lol3droflxp@kbin.social
              2·
              11 months ago

              Insect cognition has been a researched topic for some time. Most people tend to reduce them to some robotic form of being, I think that’s not the case as does more modern research. They are capable of learning, bumblebees have been observed displaying playful behaviour (or at least something that resembles it). However all evidence still suggests that their behaviour is very much governed by instincts and can be predicted quite well. There are no known intellectual abilities of insects that come close to those of somewhat intelligent vertebrates. Humans and primates are in another category altogether.

  • angrystego@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    11 months ago

    There are two wolves in this comment section.

    One says: Animals are so cool!

    The other one is like: But people are superior!

  • alehc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    What the hell is this title? Isn’t the whole article describing the ant-aphid relationship while emphatizing that we can’t really compare it in human terms?