Adventures Among Ants by Mark W. Moffett

Author:Mark W. Moffett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science
ISBN: 9780520271289
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 2011-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

13 abduction in the afternoon

A week into my stay at California’s Sagehen Creek, I was lounging among the grass tufts next to a Polyergus breviceps ant nest with Faerthen Felix, the station’s assistant manager. I was trying to determine exactly how their raids transpire, and we had shown up early to catch the moment when the action began. But for most of the day not a single Amazon had shown her face. When the first slavemaker appeared at 4 P.M., she showed a supreme indifference to the slaves that were industriously collecting bits of my jelly sandwich. By 4:45, a hundred Amazons were milling about. While the foraging slaves went far afield, the Amazons stayed within 2 to 3 meters of their nest entrance.

That had been the habit of every colony I’d observed: no Amazon ants most of the day, then a slow buildup of milling workers near the nest late in the afternoon. Faerthen and I tried to figure out what all the wandering Amazons were doing. In time, the raid would depart, and they would join it, but until then they occupied their time examining every cranny near the nest. Were they foraging? Faerthen asked. No: finding meals is slaves’ work. The milling ants never picked up a thing, nor was there any indication that they laid trails or took notice of one another. Was their exploration part of colony defense? Perhaps. I had heard that when raiding workers encounter another Amazon colony, they attempt to destroy it and carry off its brood as a source of slaves of their own kind.1 So I dropped an alien Polyergus in front of the milling workers to see if they would respond—and was not surprised, given the threat she represented to their colony, that they immediately punctured her to death.

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