Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
What happens to dead ants?
Oh, Matthew Alice:
My gears turn in wonder when I see ants and one of them has a dead fellow ant in its jaws. Why do they carry away these dead ants? Where do they take them? What does it all mean?
-- Sitting and Pondering (in Alaska, maybe, judging from the postcard)
Death and bereavement in the ant world are more chemical than cosmic. I'll give you the facts. You sort out the philosophy. Two things to keep in mind -- (1) about 90 percent of all communication in antdom involves chemical signals, and (2) ants are very tidy. An ant that's wounded in the line of duty exudes alarm chemicals that incite the other ants to rally to its aid. If they arrive on the scene and brother ant isn't moving, they don't have to nudge him with their toes or feel for a pulse. They know he's dead because he smells dead. That's a whole different set of chemicals that starts accumulating as soon as the ant bites it. Death pheromones stimulate the other ants to pick up the body and lug it back to the nest. Actually, it goes to the trash heap near the nest. Each colony has its own landfill area full of debris from their tunnels and the corpses of former members. Why are ants so tidy? Science is working on an answer, I'm sure.
Science guys tested ants' response to death chemicals by putting some on pieces of paper. Dutifully, the ants carried the paper away to their garbage dump. Weirdest of all, when they put the smell on a healthy ant, it played dead, his friends carried him off, and once they left, he licked all the smell off him and went on about his anty business as if nothing had happened.
Here's something you might be interested in.
What happens to dead ants?
What happens to dead ants?
Oh, Matthew Alice:
My gears turn in wonder when I see ants and one of them has a dead fellow ant in its jaws. Why do they carry away these dead ants? Where do they take them? What does it all mean?
-- Sitting and Pondering (in Alaska, maybe, judging from the postcard)
Death and bereavement in the ant world are more chemical than cosmic. I'll give you the facts. You sort out the philosophy. Two things to keep in mind -- (1) about 90 percent of all communication in antdom involves chemical signals, and (2) ants are very tidy. An ant that's wounded in the line of duty exudes alarm chemicals that incite the other ants to rally to its aid. If they arrive on the scene and brother ant isn't moving, they don't have to nudge him with their toes or feel for a pulse. They know he's dead because he smells dead. That's a whole different set of chemicals that starts accumulating as soon as the ant bites it. Death pheromones stimulate the other ants to pick up the body and lug it back to the nest. Actually, it goes to the trash heap near the nest. Each colony has its own landfill area full of debris from their tunnels and the corpses of former members. Why are ants so tidy? Science is working on an answer, I'm sure.
Science guys tested ants' response to death chemicals by putting some on pieces of paper. Dutifully, the ants carried the paper away to their garbage dump. Weirdest of all, when they put the smell on a healthy ant, it played dead, his friends carried him off, and once they left, he licked all the smell off him and went on about his anty business as if nothing had happened.
Comments