Washington County Enterprise-Leader
An Ant’s Life: Here Whether We Like It Or Not
The new coronavirus has changed how humans relate to each other, travel, shop, see doctors, go to school and entertain themselves. So much change makes what hasn’t changed stand out in relief. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Cows produce milk. Birds eat worms. Coffee and tea provide a lift.
Ants invade homes, whether we like it or not.
They love our kitchen sinks, laundry rooms, bathrooms, and any place where food may have been left unattended for five milliseconds. They just don’t seem to have enough food and room outside.
Told to a group of ladies out for a hike: Did you know if you put all the ants on one side of a giant scale and all the humans alive right now on the other, they would weigh the same?
10,000 Species Of Ants
Whether urban legend or mostly true, the ant constituency of life on planet Earth is out and out buggy. According to a 1988 edition of The World Book Encyclopedia (TWBE), more than 10,000 species of ants have been identified. A recent query of a pest specialist with a local pest control company confirmed that number is still accurate.
The World Book Encyclopedia includes vivid color drawings and photographs of ants, and shows in detail the major sections of an ant’s body: head, trunk, waist and gaster. The gaster is what most call the tail or hind end. Most can easily observe mandibles, eyes and antennae as the major components of an ant’s head and legs sprouting from the trunk in the middle, but one has to be shown through cut-away drawings that organs of digestion and elimination and, for some species, a poison sac with stinger, are in the gaster.
Industrial, Hard Workers
Comparing the intense industriousness of ants to humans is a losing proposition. No worker ant has to be told, “Get off your gaster and take out the trash.” These worker ants take the cake when it comes to strength, too. Everyone knows most ants can lift more than 10 times their own weight, and according to the Encyclopedia, some ants can lift as much as 50 times. Arnold Schwarzenegger, eat your heart out.
“Ant-Man,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Them!” (black-and-white sci-fi horror, 1954), “Antz” ( animated, 1998), “Ants” (with humans, 1977) and other films glorify, humanize or vilify ants, most of which want only to feed the colony, build and then protect the nest, and reproduce. Ants know how to keep it simple, and they don’t seem to be affected by ol’ covid-19.
Speaking of managing infection, though, according to “Ants practice social distancing,” an article in the August/September 2020 issue of membership magazine “National Wildlife,” published by National Wildlife Federation, Swiss and Austrian scientists used an automated tracking system in a controlled study and learned worker ants that stay in the nest to nurse the brood will move the brood to rooms deeper inside the nest to avoid contact with forager workers who may come into contact with pathogens on the outside. In addition, foragers will spend more time away from the nest to decrease the possibility of transmission. Is it fair to say ants are not only industrious and super strong, but also considerate?
Sorry, Guys, Males Die Soon
Besides worker ants, like the above mentioned nurses and foragers, the two other major groups, or castes, are queens and males. Queens establish colonies and then lay eggs the rest of their lives. Some colonies have only one queen, but some have more. Males, according to TWBE, “do not do any work in the colony. They live a short time to mate with young queens,” and then they wander off to die within a few weeks or months. Sorry, guys. On the other hand, some worker and queen ants can live up to 20 years, according to TWBE.
Workers are all female, and they love to lick and touch each other. What they do varies some between species, but they help build the nest; feed, water and protect the colony; care for the queen; and babysit eggs, larvae, and pupa, which are the three stages of ant creation and are the white blobs ants carry away when a nest is disturbed.
Ants As Pests
Tim Zmolek, pest specialist with Advance Pest
Control in Springdale, said ants come into houses from nests hundreds of feet away and from nests built inside homes. He said the procedure of following an ant trail and then destroying the nest and queen is the only way to fully clear out a colony. Some people say they pour boiling water on top of outdoor nests to kill a colony, but Zmolek said that won’t do the trick unless it kills the queen.
He said some ants tunnel out wood beams and foam and sheet insulation for their nests. Think childhood ant farm except not in a container of sand with transparent walls.
Zmolek said the odorous house ant is the most common species found in kitchens and bathrooms. He said keeping food put away and food crumbs swept and wiped up can help prevent an invasion (sometimes hard to do with pet food), but he said depending on what ants are seeking, they may come anyway. He said they also seek water and sometime nest-building materials.
This Old House host Bob Vila and collaborator Manasa Reddigari, on bobvila. com, offer homemade pest bait trap recipes using borax. Commercial ant bait traps are available in stores.
Zmolek said diatomaceous earth, if spread very thinly where ants are trailing, will dry out and kill ants, preventing them from laying their pheromone trails which is what the rest of the colony follows. A Wikipedia search of diatomaceous earth shows that it is “a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that crumbles easily into an off-white powder.” Some folk remedies or preventatives include sprinkling cinnamon or chili powder along paths where ants are trailing.
Zmolek said sealing holes and cracks in a house, raking leaf litter away from the foundation and from the yard, and cutting foliage away so it doesn’t touch the exterior can help keep ants out, and, of course, professional pest exterminators can spray and root out colonies.
Army Ants & Fire Ants
Two species deserve some attention: army ants and fire ants. Most people won’t forget the intense pain of a fire ant bite. Zmolek said in his more than 20-year career as a pest specialist, he has experienced only two issues with fire ants in Northwest Arkansas, and he said those were brought in by sod companies from further south. He said winters in northwest Arkansas still get too cold for fire ants to survive.
Ronnie Horn, an agriculture agent with Washington County Extension Service, said fire ants are, generally speaking, contained mostly south of I-40.
And what about those army ants? “The Naked Jungle,” a 1954 Technicolor film directed by Byron Haskins and starring Charlton Heston, shows an army ant march in South America, millions upon millions of ants marching in a “2-mile wide, 20-mile-long column,” each and every one eating every edible thing in its path, including vegetation to the root and humans to the bone. The wasteland left behind is stunning and chilling. Could it be real or is it exaggerated for cinematic effect?
In her novel “The Poinsonwood Bible,” Barbara Kingsolver describes an army ant march in an African jungle in frightening detail.
Fortunately, army ants do not live in North America.
On the flip side of fire and army ant horrors, watch “Medicine Man,” a 1992 film starring Sean Connery and Lorraine Bracco, to learn a different version of ant power. While the movie might give ants too much credit, ants do help keep soil aerated, and they serve as food for birds, spiders, frogs, toads, lizards and other insects.
Ants, we live with them, more closely than we care to admit. Their presence in amber offers one clue as to how long they have been on the planet, and odds are their kind will outlive everyone and everything.
We’d like to live and let live, but it’s hard when a whole, white-blob-bearing colony waltzes through the laundry room or invades the mailbox.