We had a minor incident here the other day. Quinn got an ant farm a couple of months back for his birthday. In theory we could have ordered ants to put into it, but that never happened, so eventually whenever we would find an ant, we would throw him into the farm. The farm has recently gotten quite populated. Too populated one might say. I made the mistake the other day of trying to throw in another ant. In the time it took me to throw him in, another one got out. Then the lid wasn't sealed and several more got out after that. For a very short period of time, I tried catching the escapees and putting them back into the farm, but it was a futile effort (much like putting toothpaste back into the tube after it's all out, but harder). Sadly I have to report that after I gave up trying to catch them, the escapees lost their lives in their escape attempt. For some reason I still have this image in my head of the ants yelling "Freedom".
4 comments:
How did they lose their lives? Shoe? Paper towel? Vacuum?
I imagine the squashed ants yelling, "Mein Leieben!" or whatever they yelled in Castle Wolfenstein.
What's interesting to me is that if you put ants of different colonies (and perhaps even different species) into the same colony, did they colonize? I would expect them to fight and kill each other unless they were from the same colony? Or, could we learn something about race relations from our insect neighbors?
The death dealer was fingers in most cases and in one case a shoe (with a foot in it).
And I *think* they're all from the same colony. The all have the same look (sizes were different on some, but the body / build was the same) and for the most part none of the ones we threw in were ever killed by the others.
Umm... don't they usually send you a queen ant so you can kind of start a colony? Maybe I remember incorrectly...
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