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Living together in huge colonies of a few dozen individuals to a few million, ants make foraging a truly collective effort. If there is only a small piece of food around, they will find it and exploit it. Ants are native to almost every ecosystem on the planet outside Antarctica. There are over 12,000 documented species (out of over 20,000 estimated), including fire ants, red ants, black ants, and carpenter ants. This article will cover some fascinating facts about what ants eat and how, including some of the amazing relationships they have developed with other species.
What does the ant eat?
Ants are truly diverse in the sheer amount of food they consume. In general, they are omnivorous animals that feed on both plants and meat. Another term for an omnivorous animal that will eat almost anything it can find is a generalist or opportunist. For example, consider the diet of the fire ants, a group that includes about 200 species with a very powerful stinger. Fire ants will consume spiders, earthworms, plants, seeds, honeydew, eggs, carrion (including small vertebrates) and even others insects. They are also attracted to any sweet or salty foods left around the house, which, combined with their small size and sheer numbers, can be a particularly nuisance to humans. Common black ants, which often raid gardens and human homes, also eat about the same. Black ants are particularly adept at exploiting leftover food scraps.
While opportunism is common in the ant world, some species have developed truly unique feeding strategies. The leafcutter ant, native to tropical America, forms a mutually beneficial relationship with fungi. They will actively cultivate the fungus like a gardener by feeding the plant material and protecting it from other animals. In turn, small parts of the fungi are used to feed the ant larvae. A leafcutter ant is incredibly strong; one of the most amazing facts is that a single individual can carry up to 20 times their body weight in plant material at a time.
Another fascinating species are the so-called milk ants. They exhibit mutually symbiotic behavior with the ability to “breed” aphids for food such as livestock. Aphids are tiny insects that feed on plant sap and then produce a sweet sugary substance called honeydew. The ants will protect the aphids from danger and in return they get to harvest the honeydew the aphids produce. While this provides some benefits to the aphid, the relationship can also become very dangerous and aggressive. When the aphid tries to develop wings and flies away, the ants sometimes pull the wings off right away to ground the aphid.
Lemon ants have another interesting strategy. They make their natural herbicide to kill every other plant around except the one they feed on. This essentially allows them to adapt the environment to their needs. There are many more interesting strategies, too many to list in one article. Some ants lay traps, while others entangle their prey in sticky material. Ants also sometimes extract nectar from flowers, but they rarely act as consistent pollinators by transferring pollen from one flower to another as a way to fertilize them. This task is better left to bees and butterflies.
Despite their huge diversity of diets, there is one thing they don’t normally consume: wood. Because of their name, carpenter ants are often the subject of this erroneous belief. They only chew through wood to make a nest, not to eat the material. Instead, carpenter ants mainly feed on fruits, honeydew, plants and other insects and arthropods.
How do ants find and eat food?
Ant societies are divided into a few different specialized groups. Worker ants are tasked with finding and identifying abundant food sources nearby. As it makes the journey back to the nest, the worker bee leaves a chemical trail for the other ants to follow. These pheromones are unique to that particular colony and help mark the territory so that other colonies do not invade. Workers can be active at any time of the day or night, depending on the species. Ants have strong jaws to lift or hold food in place. They chew the food and mix it with saliva like any other animal.
Do ants eat grass and leaves?
Yes, grass and leaves are important components in the diet of many ant species, especially the leaf cutter. The strong jaws are very suitable for cutting vegetable material.
What insects eat ants?
Ants eat all kinds of insects, including: wasps, moths, and other ants. Sometimes when there is a particularly severe famine, the queen will even eat members of her colony to stay alive. Her survival is paramount to the success of the entire colony.
Do ants eat people?
No, ants do not hunt and do not feed people (unless a person is already dead). While some species have a very painful sting, one would rarely die from it.
What kind of food are ants most attracted to?
Ants are generally attracted to plant matter (especially the sweet kind) and insects. They also like to forage for human food. But they will apparently eat almost anything.
A complete list of the top 15 foods the ant eats
Ants feed on a truly amazing variety of different foods. Here are some basic facts about the normal omnivorous diet of ants.
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