Do Ants Know If Their Mates Are Missing

[leon]

Its all good Ken, very interesting to hear some of the comments.

Leon

[mishku]

+1 for pheromones

Back in my lab bench days (see, told you I was once a TOTALLY LEGIT scientist type ), one of my most hated jobs was to harvest embryos from lady-mice. Unfortunately, we would need a cage full in order to obtain enough viable embryos, and even more unfortunately, the poor lady-mice didn't survive the process. Being the greenest in the lab, twas my job to dispatch them - but not without the warning that the last mice were the most difficult, because they became terribly skittish. We surmised that this was likely due to a pheromonal or similar response. On the up side, I always consoled myself that they were wined and dined by the boy mice the night before d-day, so at least they died happy

[GrahamL]

Maybe they saw all the mouse blood on your hands

[acropolite (Phil)]

Don't get me started on ants and scale. We have a particularly nasty scale (amongst others) in our garden called cotton cushion scale, I believe transported and tended by the Ants. Not only do these nasties suck the living daylights out of our plants, but the resultant black mildew from their "droppings" causes problems as well. We've lost several plants to scale, the usual remedy of white oil is useless on english box hedge, we've had to resort to using Rogor ( a systemic insecticide) mixed with pyrethrum to poisen the buggers and despatch their partners in crime ant mates.

[Miaplacidus (Brian)]

My ants commit hari-kiri every December, although it seems to be only the winged members of the nest. The other ants carry them out of the nest and deposit them neatly along our window ledge. I think they do it to make me feel guilty because one of our Christmas guests years ago sprayed some poison. (That really pissed me off. I hate poison much more than I hate ants.)

[Baddad (Marty)]

Hi Ken,

That's now understood. I should have edited it after I saw your name.

Phil:
Rogor is very toxic to birds. Be careful with it. LD50 is said to be 7mgs/Kg. Putting it another way:

a drop of 1 gram is enough to kill half of a sample of 800 birds weighing an average of 200 grams each.

Mammalian toxicity is low. It is widely used in agriculture. Particulary for fruit fly control.

Cheers

[JethroB76 (Jeff)]

I like the zombie ants

[vic4loc (Victor)]

Used to be in the reserve and we camp out a lot and always come across the big & agressive bull ants. I was told not to attack or squash them as they will give off scent that they are being attacked and the rest of the nest will come over.

Rather we usually pour rifle oil over them, and this blocks their breathing pores, this way they die from suffocation and dont realised they are being attacked, and hence do not release the scent to others.

[ballaratdragons (Ken)]

Originally Posted by vic4loc

Used to be in the reserve and we camp out a lot and always come across the big & agressive bull ants. I was told not to attack or squash them as they will give off scent that they are being attacked and the rest of the nest will come over.

Rather we usually pour rifle oil over them, and this blocks their breathing pores, this way they die from suffocation and dont realised they are being attacked, and hence do not release the scent to others.

Another interesting fact about the Australian Bullant.

The Australian Bullant is the largest and most ferocious ants on Earth. They are so aggressive that if they are ripped or cut in halves, the front half with the mandible and the back half with the stinger actually keep attacking each other!

"But the bulldog-ant of Australia affords us the most extraordinary example of this kind; for if it is cut in two, a battle begins between the head and the tail. The head seizes the tail in its teeth, and the tail defends itself bravely by stinging the head: the battle may last for half an hour, until they die or are dragged away by other ants. This contest takes place every time the experiment is tried." - Myrmecia - From Wikipedia

[leon]

Nasty little critters Ken.

Leon