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Ants also farm aphids, so they may have beaten us to livestock farming too
by ants_everywhere 2y ago
Ants also farm aphids, so they may have beaten us to livestock farming too
- animal_spirits 2y agoI learned this fact from watching the documentary "The Queen of trees", quite fascinating! It blew my mind when I first saw it. The documentary is free on YouTube!
- codetrotter 2y agohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xy86ak2fQJM This one?
- animal_spirits 2y agoThat's the one!
- interludead 2y agoThe Queen of Trees is an excellent documentary
- analog31 2y agoSeeing ants crawling up and down a tree is how I discovered that the tree was infested with aphids.
- interludead 2y agoObserving can be a helpful clue
- skirge 2y agoants save them through the winter and then spread them
- madaxe_again 2y agoThey also spelt barley. I’ve watched the sugar ants here with fascination as late every summer they gather vast quantities of barley corns, and then drag them below ground. A few weeks later they eject heaps of husks around the entrances to their nests, and on the one occasion I accidentally dug into one of their nests, it stank like a malthouse. I can only assume that their purpose is to convert the carbohydrates in the grain into sugars by encouraging the germination process, which they then live off through the winter. I can’t actually seem to find any documentation of the behaviour, but after seeing them do it for the five years we’ve lived here, I’m under the impression it’s no fluke.
- jeltz 2y agoAn article on another species doing this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5125654/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5125654/
- gwervc 2y agoNew conspiracy theory: ants developed Factorio to train us to their thinking and organization.
- qbxk 2y agoIt goes farther up the chain, it's actually the fungi's plan