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A black drongo in a typical anting posture. Anting is a maintenance behavior during which birds rub insects, usually ants, on their feathers and skin.The bird may pick up the insects in its bill and rub them on the body (active anting), or the bird may lie in an area of high density of the insects and perform dust bathing-like movements (passive anting).
The species typically doesn't bite humans unless provoked, but they do like to make their nests in damp wood—which explains the draw of an often-empty old cabin in the mountains. Truthfully, it ...
One is a long-lasting attractive chemical that is used to build a trail network. It remains detectable even if the ants do not use the trail for several days. Pharaoh ants cease activity at night and begin each day of work at around 8 am, yet parts of the trail network are identical each day. [11]
Myrmecophilous (ant-loving) caterpillars of the butterfly family Lycaenidae (e.g., blues, coppers, or hairstreaks) are herded by the ants, led to feeding areas in the daytime, and brought inside the ants' nest at night. The caterpillars have a gland which secretes honeydew when the ants massage them.
In Texas, these pesky insects come out during the fall as things cool down.
"Scout" ants are the first ones out of the mound every morning. They seek food, and mark their path as they return to the mound to alert the worker ants. The worker ants follow the scent trail and collect the food. Other worker ants clean, extend, and generally tend to the mound, the queen, and the brood. All the ants in the colonies are ...
Carpenter ants (Camponotus spp.) are large ants (workers 7 to 13 mm or 1 ⁄ 4 to 1 ⁄ 2 in) indigenous to many forested parts of the world. [ 4 ] They build nests inside wood, consisting of galleries chewed out with their mandibles or jaws, preferably in dead, damp wood.
Nests can contain thousands of individuals, and such large nests may be noticed by the audible cracking sound the workers produce. The black carpenter ant cannot sting, but the larger workers can administer a sharp bite, which can become further irritated by the spraying of formic acid onto the wound. Workers tend aphids, with the smaller ...