User Manual

species of ants dig into the ground. All alone, each queen clears
a small chamber, seals the tunnel, and starts laying eggs. The
queens will never leave their chambers.
The eggs hatch and become larvae which are little, legless,
worm-like creatures that must be fed by the queen. When the
larvae are fully grown, they become “pupae”. Ant pupae have
either a barrel or an ant shape.
Over time, new adult ants emerge from the pupae. They busily
start working to prepare the new nest but also have to go out
and nd food. The job of these new worker ants is to take care
of the queen along with the new eggs and larvae. The queen
will spend the rest of her life laying eggs. Most of those eggs
will become workers, while only a few will become either males
or queens. The workers are all female, even though they can’t
lay eggs. They are assigned to do the many different jobs that
are necessary to guarantee that the ant colony will survive. The
jobs depend on the life style of that particular type of ant.
Of all the different types of social insects, ants have the most
interesting variations in community life. Harvester ants dig
deep underground “cities” that often extend as much as fteen
feet below the surface. They gather seeds for future dinners,
storing them in underground bins. If a seed sprouts, an ant will
grab it and dump it outside many feet away from the entrance
to the “city.” After a rain, ants immediately start removing
seeds from the nest laying them on the ground and waiting
until they have dried. Then they grab their seeds and scamper
back into the nest where they are again neatly piled in their
bins. The harvester ants like to keep their nest spic and span
and usually are as neat above ground as they are below. They
make a pile of garbage, including dead ants, away from the
entrance to the nest.
In Africa, the erce ant “hunters” (called army ants) are always
on the go and don’t have a permanent home. Army ants eat
insects, dead animals, or any living creature that they can
catch. They have been known to reduce a tethered horse to a
skeleton in a matter of hours. Can you imagine how strong their
mandibles are! They do most of their hunting when they have
larvae to feed—their queen lays 25,000 eggs at a time. When
these ants go through villages, the people often leave until the
ants have gone away.
You shouldn’t be surprised if you see row after row of ants
carrying little leafy “sails”. Often called “leaf cutters” or
“fungus growers”, these special “farmer” ants chew up leaves
to make a special kind of spongy mulch. They spread this mulch
over the oors of large underground chambers and use it to
grow a special kind of fungus. Small bulbs grow on the fungus
that is eaten by the ants. These ants have to be very good
farmers in order to grow enough food for the entire colony,
which may consist of several million ants.
Some ants have to take care of special “cows”. These “cows”
are insects called aphids. The ants stroke the aphids to make
them give off little drops of liquid, called honeydew. One group
of these “dairyman” ants uses living “storage tanks”. Certain
members of this group are loaded up with honeydew until
they can’t even move. They spend their lives hanging from the
ceiling of their chamber, feeding hungry ants that pass by,
taking all the extra honeydew from the ants that collect it. Now
you know why they’re known as “honey pot ants”.
Some ants make slaves out of other ants. They raid other
colonies and steal the pupae. When those pupae become adults,
they are used as slaves.