What Do Ants Eat

Have you ever wondered what ants eat? Today we tell you this and much more. Because ants are the most curious living beings on the animal planet, their scientific name is Formicate, their average lifespan can be up to 15 years and there are more than 12,000 species.

They live in colonies and they are insects that collaborate with each other, they defend their territory with their lives, each ant fulfills a specific function within its colony, they are practically born with their function already dictated and they cannot carry out any additional task to the one assigned to them genetically by the queen.

They live practically everywhere in the world, except at the poles (north and south), because the extreme cold of these areas makes their survival impossible.

Scientific findings have shown that ants have existed since prehistory, so they are evolved beings that have adapted to the changes that the planet has undergone. Depending on their species, these can be of various sizes and colors.

Ants are one of the living beings that do not have lungs as such; rather their entire body has holes that are responsible for fulfilling the function of breathing.

To understand the ants a little more, it is good to take into account the following points:

• They locate their house or colony in a place that is large enough and with adequate space so that they can create their network of paths and thus stay safe from any natural element that they consider may affect their nest or their colony.
• The ants create networks of paths so complicated that they must leave chemical trails along the path to avoid getting lost, this trail is only known to them, so when we see them walking we see how they “kiss” it is just at that moment that they share a little information since as they walk they leave the trail back home so that the others can get it and not get lost.
• Naturally, at the entrance of their caves they create traps to prevent any external event, such as other ants, rain or insects from attacking them, that is, they create a labyrinth in order to protect their colony and their queen.
• Within their own network of paths that they create underground, they build adapted compartments, each one with a certain purpose, that is, a place for the queen, one to store food and another for the young to grow and perform the function assigned to them. At birth.
• Among other curiosities, ants, unlike many animals, do not have bones; rather they have a hard body called an exoskeleton or outer skeleton.
• The ants that we commonly see walking in the places where they live are the female ants, they are the main workers of the colony, there are also male ants or drones, whose only function is to mate with the Queen of the Colony and then die, their life is very short, they are born, grow and become fertile, mate and then die.
• These insects can carry very heavy objects for their size, up to a hundred times their weight; it is as if a 70 kilo person carried an object that weighs 7 tons.
• Some of the ants do not eat what we see that they take, that is, the sweets, they do not eat them, they only pick them up and transport them to their colony and there with that sweet or whatever they take they feed a fungus that is the provides them with food as such.
• Ants, depending on their class, eat seeds, nectar, insects, fruits, sugar, secretions from flowers, plants or other insects such as caterpillars, nuts, meat, dairy products.
• There is a type of ants that feed on other insects, known as predatory ants, since any insect that is available and edible is hunted and eaten.
• The scavengers eat all the meat and organs of dead animals, due to the strength of their jaws they can eat them without problems in a few hours since practically the entire colony, once the food is found, can focus on the task of eating.
• There are also those that eat plants, seeds, grains, and are considered pests because they can kill entire crops if they are not eliminated.
• The cannibals eat each other, if at any time their food becomes scarce within their own colony, or they go to another colony of ants where they attack and eat the ones that live there, including the larvae, eggs or young.
• There are classes of ants that live together with insects that secrete substances that are food for them, so they will take care of them, move from one place to another and consent to these insects in order to obtain their food.
• Each ant is born with a specific function, some will be guardians of the Queen, others will predigest the food and thus feed the young, or bring food to the queen since once she begins her task of mating and laying eggs, she cannot stop, because it is an activity that is carried out continuously, they are also in charge of feeding the males.
• Some will be explorers who will go out in search of food; others will carry the food from the place where they find it to their colony.
• Others will be in charge of taking care of the larvae from the moment they are laid by the queen and then they move it to another place, they all work together to create the nest for the queen.
  If you plan to start an ant farm, here are some small instructions to achieve it

What do you need:

• Fish tank or large container made of glass or sheets of transparent resistant plastic.
• Sand.
• Sweets.
• Candy.
• Sugar.

Instructions

1. To begin with, we must create an environment in which the ants can live. We achieve this by using a fish tank or one built with resistant plastic sheets. Keep in mind that it must withstand the pressure created by the sand.
2. You fill the container with a mixture of various sands that you find in the place where you live and mix it with others that you get in the surroundings.
3. Once the container is full, place it in a place where natural sunlight falls, this with the intention that the ant carry out its daily routine in the most natural way possible.
4. You have two options to start the farm, you can locate an Ant Farm Kit in a specialized store, which brings a Queen and several workers, or you can hunt them yourself, just place a piece of candy near a natural colony of them and wait to enter and then you move them to their new environment, although this will not do you any good if you do not have a queen in your artificial colony.
5. The explorer ants will go out to look for the food that best suits their needs, as they walk they leave a chemical trail that only they are able to identify back to their cave, this same trail will indicate to the worker ants that they are walking they must continue to find the food and return to their colony without getting lost.
6. So place, preferably inside the same container, a piece of food so that they feel attracted. Once they find a food source, most ants, depending on their class, transport that food to their colony where they store it and then eat it.
7. Wait for the ants to gradually create their colony; you will not always be successful because the queen may not feel comfortable with the artificially created environment.

Tips

• Ideally, you should buy some ants in specialized stores in this field and that they include the Queen Ant, without this the worker ants will not have any function to fulfill and will die of natural causes in less than a month.
• Also get good advice from the kit seller so that he can recommend a mixture of sands that makes the environment pleasant and the queen can start the colonization.
• If you plan to raise ants or have a colony in your house, make sure that the breed is the right one, since there is a class of ants that kill mammals in order to obtain their food, for example, if you have hamsters they can be in danger since the ants will attack like an enraged swarm to eat it.
• A fish tank can work as a good place to start a colony, as you can see inside the network of tunnels and better observe the behavior of the colonies.
• Do not place the container directly under the sun, remember that the plastic or glass can heat up and kill the ants due to excess heat.
• Be careful what food you put out as it can attract other animals and harm your colony.
• Unless you manage to keep the ants happy in their artificial environment, they will go out in search of one more suitable for their colony, it is something totally natural since it is their way of surviving.
• Never water the sand, this act could kill the colony because the water can drown them.