Comments on: Formica ant

By: Insect Picture of the Day » Mating Flight: Ants

Insect Picture of the Day » Mating Flight: Ants — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 13:03:31 +0000

[...] technically, the flight portion hasn’t actually started. Tiogshi Laj went back to the ant colony he photographed last week and took another look. This time he found about a dozen of these larger, winged ants hanging [...]

By: Entr0physt

Entr0physt — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:29:27 +0000

Wow! Very cool behavior. Crows are known to be intelligent, but it’s still nice to see some of the animal old chauvanism drop away. Primates are far from the only tool users… you don’t have to have dexterous fingers to figure out clever ways to use the world around you.

By: tceisele

tceisele — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 12:04:14 +0000

Maybe the crow was both having breakfast, and getting cleaned. I’ve read about how some birds will intentionally annoy large ant nests so that the ants will spray them with formic acid. One theory is that the formic acid helps kill mites and other parasites on the bird.

Ah, here we go. It’s called anting.

By: Tiogshi Laj

Tiogshi Laj — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 06:24:09 +0000

Actually, I said in the e-mail that I did see something disturbing the nest. There was a crow who appeared to be “scrubbing” herself clean in the dirt (crows do that), but as I got closer it became apparent she wasn’t cleaning; she was having breakfast!

These ants were still out in full force doing repair duties when I walked past the nest again later in the day.