Myrmecology Dies in Darkness
Millions of years before the Wright brothers climbed into their crappy plane, worker ants were already flying around. These ants didn’t have wings. They only had super-powered elastic jaws. Even today, these ants flip through the air, crossing distances greater than 20 times their body length. These ants are Odontomachus.
The true saint leaves wisdom to the ants, takes cues from the fishes, and leaves willfulness to the sheep.
In an exciting new study recently available online in the journal Animal Behaviour, researchers found that two species of ants are selective in their use of tools for liquid food transport. Although tool use in ants has already established in previous studies, the mechanisms involved in tool use selection have rarely been investigated. Dr. István Maák and colleagues found that ants exhibit selective behavior in tool use, preferring materials that exhibit optimal handling and/or soaking properties. Perhaps most intriguing, the ants learned to preferentially use artificial tools that have superior properties for liquid food transport when compared to tools in their natural environment.
The Fort Wayne Mad Ants, founded in 2007, quickly reached prominence as a top contender in the minor league, winning the D-League championship in 2014.
This year, the Mad Ants are again performing well. Despite a narrow loss to the Maine Red Claws in an exciting game last Thursday, the Mad Ants persevered to heroically defeat both the Texas Legends and Delaware 87ers over the weekend, bringing their season record to an historic 9-2 as they push towards this year’s championship game. If this level of performance is maintained – and with their namesake, how could it not? – the Mad Ants will be a clear favorite for the championship. The next match for the Mad Ants is tomorrow against the Long Island Nets. Go Ants!
Several human societies adopt nomadic lifestyles. From Yugurs on the Asian steppe to the Beja in northern Africa, these cultures traditionally gather food by tracking changing resources rather than relying solely on stable but geographically restricted food production. Not to be outdone by humans, some ants also exhibit nomadic behavior, most famously the army ants. But in 2008, Volker Witte and Ulrich Maschwitz reported an extraordinary and previously unknown behavior in ants: mushroom harvesting nomadism.
A story broke late last week about a new discovery: the tail of a dinosaur locked in amber. This is exciting, of course, as far as it goes. But in a shameful act of narrative misdirection, the mainstream media has avoided discussing the most substantive finding in the golden amber. As editor of The Daily Ant, I believe it is my duty to highlight the true hero of this story: Gerontoformica.
So you have ants in your house. You want to get rid of them, but you don’t know how. What can you do? There is only one surefire solution: Love your house ants.
The Daily Ant 