Honeypot ant have found a unique way to stay fed while food is sparse : by overeat one - fifth part of the settlement with so much ambrosia that they garble into last jug . Known as repletes , these brassy ants hang from the ceiling like ornate light fixity , ready to drip - feed their relatives when they come knock .
Ant Colony are famously complex , with every individual receive a purpose to play – and honeypot ant are no unlike . The species , Camponotus inflatus , live in arid parts of the westerly United States and Mexico , and their dependency members are split up into several roles . At the top of it all is the queen who boil out tiny eggs that will one sidereal day hatch and specialise .
What do honeypot ants do?
One option for young honeypotantsis to become worker who help to raise the new , keep the colony clean , and foraging for solid food . Then , there are the repletes : A group of honeypot ants whose role is decide essentially by the size of their behind .
Repletes come forth as the prominent new hatch honeypot ants are given lots of intellectual nourishment . Honeypot ant forage for proteins and fats , but the desert is also productive with plants carry ambrosia which gets stuffed into the bonnie baby .
Eventually , the replete ’s organic structure changes Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe as valves preventing the ambrosia from propel into their stomachs mean it builds up in a cavity of the dead body called a craw , make it balloon . The coloured flecks you may see on their egotistic abdomen are the plate that protect the bodies of normal - sized honeypot ants , the remainder is the underlying tissue layer that expands to fit in enough honey to make the emmet as heavy as a grape vine .
The replete ants' hard body armor gets stretched across the expanding membrane sac filled with nectar. Image credit: Smithsonian Institution NMNH Insect Zoo via Flickr,CC BY 2.0
Why do replete honeypot ants get so big?
Repletes ordinarily make up about one - fifth of the colony , so they have to stash away a quite a little of nectar - plentiful junk in the tree trunk if they ’re proceed to keep everyone fed .
When food is low and worker honeypot ants need nourishment , the repletes will regurgitate their nectar stores and drip - feed it into thirsty mandibles . When foraging is going well , the workers render the favour , delivering nectar to their exist food memory board to hold onto until it ’s call for .
Who eats honeypot ants?
The downside for honeypot ants is that their gem - like repletes stuffed with nectar represent a pretty racy find for marauder . One is Badger , whose sharp claws can burrow into honeypot ants ’ colonies and claim the repletes . Other ants will even pillage honeypot ant ' colonies and slip the nectar - stuffed repletes . Talk about precious booty .
Not only is the juicy nectar of honeypot ant primed for human usance , but according to some people it ’s the best honey out there . It ’s long been enjoyed by man partake their home ground with honeypot ants , and even Father Nature himself , Sir David Attenborough , has revel sweet confect ants .
[ H / T : Oddity Central ]
