Thursday, September 29, 2011

First Footage Of Two Ant Queens Working Together

First Footage Of Two Ant Queens Working Together

A BBC film crew have captured a rare moment of co-operation as two queens build the foundation of a new colony of honeypot ants, Myrmecocystus mimicus. A mating swarm occurs after summer storms when the queens can more easily dig in the rain softened soil.

Subsequently the queens raise an army of workers, afterwhich the weakest queen is usually ousted. The camera team from BBC Natural World spent 150 days in the Arizona deserts of USA.

3 comments:

That was fascinating. Communal insect systems are very interesting and can provide insights not only into some rare ecological systems, but also in some of our own quirky social systems.

Shame the Israeli and Palestinians can't follow their example!!

I feel sorry for the weaker Queen :(

Post a Comment

Twitter Delicious Facebook Digg Stumbleupon Favorites More