It’s such a privilege to share my home with living breathing royalty. I check on her in the morning since she’s least likely to be disturbed. They are nocturnal and she’s been up all night laying eggs and being fussed over by her daughters. At this time of day she’s sleeping deeply enough that she won’t stir if I remove the light cover. Sleeping Beauty!
I never settled on a name for her. She’s just “the queen” —
I wonder if she dreams of that bright day when she had wings. When she flew over NYC looking for seat for her empire? I don’t think ant memory works like human memory— (though they do remember AND learn.)
Ants radically reshape their brains to suit each stage of life— the parts of her that knew of flying are probably as gone as her wings—
Maybe she dreams of the feeling of her daughters massing around her in such great numbers that they all feel that impulse to produce new queens & drones.
@elan Sometimes! Though he’s very … youTube influencer styled (which is the only way to make such work a sustainable profession) but I think it harms the quality of the content— he used to make much better but less “viral” videos.
But at least it gets people thinking about ants. So I can’t be a hater.
@bovaz I think people sometimes expect all ants to have dichthadiiform queens like termites. But to have such a large queen means she can’t run while physogastric and certainly can’t fly. So only the species with “army ant syndrome” have those huge fat queens.
She must have been a sight to see flying. Ants are chaotic, awkward flyers… even I can admit they aren’t very good at it. Don’t even tuck in the legs. “landing gear” stays fully splayed for the duration of flight: they don’t know when or where they’ll run into something. You have flying black creature the size/shape of a larger wasp hurtling through the air —legs out: if ants could scream you’d hear a tiny “ahhhhh!” as they went by. (no wonder they tear off the wings with such gusto)
@wcbdata@bovaz There are so many fun words in myrmecology for “junk in the trunk”
-Repletes (honeypot workers with huge social stomachs)
-Physogastrism (temporary gaster enlargement for laying eggs)
-Dichthadiiform (gastrically enlarged queens who cannot fly)
I feel like there must be more words I’m missing for “fat ants” Consider these camponotus majors who are storing extra fat for winter… rather like repletes but not as extreme.
Some arboreal worker ants of genus Cephalotes are famous for their ability to use their flat bodies to glide when they jump off a tree branch. They are able to glide back to the trunk of the tree so they can more quickly return to their nests in the rainforest canopy.
I wonder if there is any connection between the neural structures required for worker gliding and those for queens flying. Because isn’t flying really just falling with an excess of grace?
I know N. flavipes is invasive but they are still very pretty ants. This is what we get for importing so many plants. The garden trade is almost wholly responsible for nearly all of the invasive ants! Stop planting non native plants!
Day 4: Learning to draw. Via the magic of the book, I can now apparently draw my own hand with varying levels of proficiency. I’m amazed at how good this book is. You should all try it (unless you can already draw - in which case, ignore me) #art#drawing#sketch#dailydrawing
You can sniff at block-based programming if you like, but I do find that students who used such languages in middle school have an easier time adapting to object oriented and nonlinear programming later — the downside is that nonlinearity is nearly always an illusion in computer science. And under those floating islands of functions and classes there is an absolute order —
I’ll work with some middle school students next year and so I’m learning about all this scratch nonsense.
OH my god these little ants with their "gallery traps" are diabolical.
(I wish machine translation worked better with scientific names... it's going to take me a long time to find out the names of all the species of ants in this video. )
Documentary makers no matter what language you work in... please put the names of people and the names of species on the screen!
In terms of function the mandibles of ants are their hands. Although, they do use their front legs and antennae to manipulate objects often. (they use their antennae to pack down sand, for example)
But in terms of development I don’t even know if it would be proper to say arthropod limbs are analogous to mammal limbs! We are both bilaterians but beyond being symmetric tubes? We have more in common with starfish and urchins than ants!
@timhutton@simon Which should really make you hairs stand on end as you contemplate the nature of ant cognitive activity— it is absolutely alien and yet — there are parallels— deep parallels: especially in the patterns of social organization.
Ants and humans do agriculture, make wars, take care of each other, and mould our local environment.
Most people seem to assume that and that is their primary function. But, I've watched ants use them like we might use the tips of our fingers to nudge and tap soil in particular.
I don't think so. But, to be eusocial you must also be social and that's why there are all these similar developments... that have totally different origins.