33
votes
What do ants do with human finger nails?
I believe that MattDMo's hypothesis is incorrect. Only one group of ants, the Attini tribe, cultivates fungus as a food source. This group is exclusively a New World group, thought to have ...
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29
votes
Accepted
Do ants really find the shortest path to a food source?
Short answer
Do ants really find the shortest path to a food source?
No! But they can find a decent path
Longer answer
Optimization algorithms are used to search through a possibility space that ...
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23
votes
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What do ants do with human finger nails?
There are a number of papers studying the ability of fungi to metabolize keratin, the primary structural component of nails (as well as skin and hair). Ants are also known to cultivate fungi for ...
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12
votes
Do ants really dispose of their own dead, and how/why?
Eating the dead makes far more likely you will catch whatever killed them. They transport and dispose of the dead for the same reasons we do, to reduce disease vectors. They dispose of their garbage ...
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6
votes
How genetically similar are worker ants from the same colony?
Relatedness of ants within a colony vary from species to species (as different species may use different mating systems) and from colony to colony. I will consider a basic (simplified) model of a ...
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6
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Can someone identify this ant?
In my opinion you are pretty close to the exact identification.
I think it is Marauder Ant, which could be Pheidologeton diversus, but probably Carebara affinis as well.
The main feature I can ...
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6
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what species of ant is this?
Probably a Ponerinae.
(Wikipedia, AntWiki)
It's not the easiest picture to work with, but here's what I did.
Going by the location we have the following distribution of ant species in South Australia ...
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6
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What is it about bleach that keeps Pharaoh ants away even after drying?
It's likely that the bleach (hypochlorite), which is a strong oxidizer, is destroying the trails more effectively than the vinegar. The mechanism of action here is the organic pheromone molecules, ...
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5
votes
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Why are these ants moving as a pack?
This is a really wonderful phenomenon. Ants disperse far and wide, but when one of them finds food, it brings it back to the nest, and in doing so leaves a pheromone trail. The next scout follows this ...
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5
votes
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Do ants see, have brain?
Ants do have eyes, though how well (and even whether) they see depends on the ant. They also have brains.
You aren't wrong to put quotes around "brain" since in many organisms the nervous system isn'...
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4
votes
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Do ant colonies prioritize survival of particular members above others?
I couldn't find any information about ants starving in times of plenty, most likely since it's difficult to determine whether an ant colony is "letting" certain members starve or whether the ants have ...
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4
votes
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How do parasites "reprogram" brains?
Not much is known about the mechanisms involved, but they do appear to differ significantly from parasite to parasite. I'll discuss a few different examples here, and try to provide as much ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Do ants have a "stay away" signal?
It is a long time since I set in a Computer Sci (AI) talk about this…. This explains it a bit.
Once ants have eaten they return to the nest.
On the way back to the nest they put down a scent.
This ...
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3
votes
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Why do ants dig surface paths?
I don't have it with me, but the book Adventures among Ants by Mark Moffett, which I highly recommend if you're even vaguely interested in ants, describes the creation of paths such as this. Some ants ...
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3
votes
Are these images of carpenter ants?
Hmm, the picture that you shared has ants with a striped abdomen, a characteristic feature of Carpenter ants.
(source: doyourownpestcontrol.com)
Wikipedia seems to confirm the same thing.
Carpenter ...
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3
votes
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The emergence of Phengaris butterflies from ant nests
I've been emailing some of the various researchers who worked on the papers I've cited. Jeremy Thomas and Judith Wardlaw both took time out of their (probably very busy!) schedules to reply, and they ...
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3
votes
Accepted
Do Pharaoh ants eat sealant?
The sealant in question is a self-curing expanding urethane foam, marketed under numerous brands and formulations in the US and Canada such as DuPont Great Stuff, Loctite Tite Foam, and DAP Touch 'n ...
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2
votes
Do ants feel pain?
In short, scientists usually conclude that pain is unlikely to be found in insects in the way it is defined in humans, but this is difficult or impossible to test directly.
In humans, pain is often ...
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2
votes
Would a stray ant re-home into a foreign colony (of the same kind) and will the colony accept an alien ant?
If they are from a different species, they won't accept each other.
If they are from the same species, it depends of the species:
Some species won't accept any other ant born in a different colony, ...
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2
votes
Queen ant identification
The picture is unclear but this ant looks like a Solenopsis queen. Maybe a Solenopsis invicta! Sorry if I'm wrong, I've only ever kept Camponotus and Lasius queens. I hope this is helpful though
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2
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Why are worker ants not clones of the queen?
why has evolution not produced perfect X can usually be answered by the correct mutations have not occured. evolution is about jury rigging good enough not perfection.
you are assuming ant are free ...
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2
votes
Larger Ant in trail
I'm sorry to say so, but I suppose you are not very familiar with ants?
I can't be completely sure since you have no picture, but the way you describe it, very possibly these 2 larger ants were '...
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2
votes
Can foraging worker ants become queens?
Workers cannot become "queens" because the development of a larvae into a worker or a queen happens during the larval stage, depending mainly on the food that the larvae is given. That being said, ...
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2
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Do ants know the direct (approximately shortest) path to their nest from the food morsel?
Terms that may help you research are dead reckoning or path integration. From Wikipedia:
In navigation, dead reckoning is the process of calculating one's current position by using a previously ...
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1
vote
Can someone help me identify this queen ant?
The small space between the thorax and the abdomen indicates this queen has only one petiole segment (no post-petiole). The large size and absence of an elongated first abdominal segment indicates the ...
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1
vote
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When is an ant colony at its loudest?
I believe you speak of some species of Formica spp., such as Formica polyctena (nest example)
You should mind that (i) ants are not particularly noisy insects; (ii) ant nests are 3-dimensional ...
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vote
what species of ant is this?
This is a Formicinae or a Dolichoderinae.
Myrmeciinae and Myrmicinae have two segments between the thorax and the abdomen, it is not the case here. The first segment of the gaster is elongated in ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible