“Consider the ways of the ants and be wise.” Well, today we’re going to follow the advice of that ancient proverb and visit with a scientist who studies ants. I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet, presented by the American Museum of Natural History.
We’re listening to the sounds of ants.
“So, ant colonies have these complex behaviors and they allocate workers to do different tasks.”
We’re at the Southwest Research Center in one of the most ant-rich areas in North America: the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and New Mexico. Nate Sanders is among the scientists trying to decipher patterns in ant behavior.
“So I walk up to this nest and sit down for three minutes and just count the numbers of ants engaged in each of these tasks. And there’re some ants that are doing nest maintenance work like carrying pebbles out of the nest and piling them up around the nest. Others are foraging– bringing back bits of seed and beetle legs and stuff. Others are doing something that I call loitering, and that’s just hanging out in the nest entrance, like teenagers loitering around an arcade. And there are others that are the trash people of the ant colony, where they carry out dead ants and seed husks and beetle wings and things like that.”
It turns out that ants, like humans, must reach a certain age before they’re old enough to leave the nest.
“In most cases, in social insects– that is ants, bees and wasps– the younger you are, the closer you stay to the queen to perform various tasks. So you’re born, and you’re a young ant so you stay around the queen and sort of take care of her, groom her, and then you take care of the brood. And the older you get, the farther away you get from that central location in the nest.”
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the American Museum of Natural History. Additional funding for this series has been provided by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.