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I just got back from a quick trip to Panama and everytime I'm packing up and hauling my belongings around Latin America, I think of the highly organized and industrious leaf cutter ant. A leaf cutter ant can carry almost ten times its own weight - that's like a 200-pound adult weightlifter carrying a 2,000-pound car up in the air. That would be a handy ability to have when lifting souvenir laden carryons into the overhead bins on planes!
Leaf cutter ants live in tropical areas of Latin America. It's a fascinating insect that is generally overlooked, sometimes stepped on, and usually ignored by guides as nothing a tourist might be interested in watching and learning more about. Well, how many people would say to a guide, "I really, really, really, want to see some ants!"? Right, not many would. But they deserve closer observation.
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They are fungus farmers. They don't eat the leaves they cut with their powerful jaws and carry back to their underground nests. The leafcutter ants carry the leaf pieces back, along with flower blossoms, and they chew them into a pulp, where a fungus grows as it decays. This fungus is what the ants dine on. Most of the ants are considered workers, the smallest ones tend the eggs, grow fungus, and feed members of the colony. Larger workers go out to collect leaves. Most of the ants in a colony are workers.The largest and strongest of the workers get elected "soldiers". Look at the ants riding on the leaves in these photos. No, they aren't being lazy and hitching a ride on the top of another ants' leaf, these are the soldiers that are standing guard against parasitic flies that attempt to attack the preoccupied leaf-carriers....and lay eggs inside their heads! Now that's a stressful job.
Leafcutter ants travel in long lines far into the forest, foraging some distance from their nests in search of leaves; they leave a scent(pheromone) along the trail as they leave the nest so they can find their way back home again. These scents are so powerful that each ant
produces only one billionth of a gram. One gram of this scent would easily
be enough to make an ant trail all around the world. They like to keep their trails
nice and tidy too. Smaller ants are sent out periodically to clear the area of any
debris. They are the street cleaners of
the ant world.
A few more amazing ant antics:
1- Leaf cutter ants harvest more greenery in South American forests than any other animal. In fact, within the rain forest, leaf-cutter ants consume almost 20% of the annual vegetation growth! In its lifetime, a colony of these ants may move over 20 tons of soil. A mature leafcutter colony contains more than a million individual ants and can mow down an entire tree overnight.
1- Leaf cutter ants harvest more greenery in South American forests than any other animal. In fact, within the rain forest, leaf-cutter ants consume almost 20% of the annual vegetation growth! In its lifetime, a colony of these ants may move over 20 tons of soil. A mature leafcutter colony contains more than a million individual ants and can mow down an entire tree overnight.
2- Their jaws are strong enough to cut leather. The Rainforest Indians used soldier ants to stitch wounds together. They let the ant bite both sides of a cut, then snipped its body off leaving the head behind. Now how about that for first-aid treatment...
Looking around a busy airline terminal, weary travelers carrying their burdens, hurrying past, sleepy and tired, I wondered, do the leaf cutter ants ever sleep? Are they insomniants?
They do rest, but they don't sleep in the sense that we do. Although little is known about this, we do know they don't have eyelids, so they can't close their eyes. Therefore, you wouldn't know they were asleep unless of course they happen to be snoring. They do nap, or go into a kind of meditation or relaxed state. Sometimes whole chambers have one big naptime and they have been observed being still, with their legs waving slightly in a rhythm, but the whole colony never rests at one time. In fact, they may rest only a few minutes until another worker comes in and wakes them up. They appear sluggish for a time afterward... (What no snooze button?)
They probably don't rest very well anyway because they're afraid they'll have nightmares about these guys...
They do rest, but they don't sleep in the sense that we do. Although little is known about this, we do know they don't have eyelids, so they can't close their eyes. Therefore, you wouldn't know they were asleep unless of course they happen to be snoring. They do nap, or go into a kind of meditation or relaxed state. Sometimes whole chambers have one big naptime and they have been observed being still, with their legs waving slightly in a rhythm, but the whole colony never rests at one time. In fact, they may rest only a few minutes until another worker comes in and wakes them up. They appear sluggish for a time afterward... (What no snooze button?)
They probably don't rest very well anyway because they're afraid they'll have nightmares about these guys...
I spotted this anteater at STRI (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute) on Barro Colorado Island, Panama. It's the first time I've gotten so close to one in the wild. What a thrill!
Get some rest!!
For more info on STRI look here: www.stri.org/index.php
For a quick look at some leaf cutters in action (about 30 seconds worth) click here: www.truveo.com/Leaf-cutter-ants/id/432345606359879684
And some really good close up photos here!
www.richard-seaman.com/Insects/CostaRica/LeafcutterAnts/
For the smaller reader:
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