Ants: Productive Little Beings!

Ants probably play one of the most important roles in any ecosystem

And yet they are so small that they often go unnoticed (at least by humans). But if you look closely, you can spot them almost on any terrain in every place of planet Earth. The only places I am sure you'll find less or none are deserts. But anywhere where there is some plant life, there is probably a good chance you'll spot some. And of course ants some in all varying shapes and sizes! They can be so small that you actually need a magnifying glass and yet other are so big, you definitely don't want them crawling around your body, as their bites can be very painful.

One could probably say that ants have the "job" of cleaning up nature. They collect all sorts of bio matter, make them smaller and transform them. If you leave any sort of food on the ground, chances are that in a matter of an hour or so you'll find a "stream" of ants running there and breaking that thing down. And then we see the famous ant streets which grows in size until the food is devoured.

Today I thought to have a closer look at one of these ant colonies

Of course standing on the earth means that you only get a very slim slice of what is going on. Most of the stiff happens underground. But since that is hard to look at, I'm staying above :)

It all started when I saw a plant being covered in ants

You have to look very close to actually see them... But the whole plant is basically covered in them!

The ants were collecting some "stuff" on the plant. I guess this must have been some small white seeds that the plant produced and which the ants were now gathering. You can see the resulting ant street here:

But where were they bringing all of this? Well, I didn't have to look very long to see their home. You can see the plant in the distance and the entrance to their tunnels at the bottom of this picture. The distance was about 3-4 meters.

Here is a close up of workers bringing the harvest to their colony.

Ants really are amazing creatures... they can carry many times their body weight which often looks quite amazing.

And here they are trying to fit those big seeds into their entrance:

I suppose what happens next is that they make the seeds smaller as most of the seed has plant material which is not nutrient rich. They might still use that material for building some part of their colony, but obviously it is the seed itself which will provide the colony with food.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour!

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