Ants "honey barrels" Bashny.Net

By analogy with other species of honey ants live in colonies, each of the colonies has its own size. Usually one colony is included from a hundred to several million insects, including the uterus, which is able to save up to a thousand eggs a day, the ants are workers and males.





This insect feeds from the SAP of plants, which contains large amounts of sugar.Excess sugar allocated to the plant by aphids is the honeydew that gladly lick the honey ants.





But as you know, the desert is characterized by a relatively small amount of vegetation, particularly aphids. Therefore, for the survival of the honey ants use the food, resulting in a slightly different way. A separate species of ants from the colony – "honey barrels" with a large elastic abdomen, specially designed to store food, provide it with all the other insects during the entire period of existence.





These ants are sometimes called "living storage containers". They fill your abdomen with food to such an extent as to significantly exceed the size of other ants and thus feed them.Often, because of the very large stocks, they are not even able to move independently, therefore, forced to hang in the top of the anthill.





Interestingly, the honey dew really hit the spot and the aborigines living in Australia. They find the nest, caught a "honey barrels" and eating them as substitutes for ordinary candy.

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