by artsy ants
Behold – a discovery of artistic works by ants in our very own yard!
Note the way the sand has been dug up from between the pavers into circular shapes.
Note in this detail all the big and tiny eggs and even tinier ants.
The story? We use some garbage cans for prunings that are unsuitable for the compost but are to be picked up by municipal trucks on their weekly rounds. For a few days two of these had been sitting on these pavers closer to the street. This afternoon our daughter Erika, who was visiting and helping me put out the various bins to the curb, noticed these upon picking the cans up. Wow, art by ants.
Looking closer we noted the sand patterns followed the patterns of the grooves on the underside of the cans, then noticed all the eggs, big and little and the tiny black pavement ants scurrying about in alarm, frantically carrying the eggs back down to their colonies under the bricks. Luckily and thankfully Erika had her iPhone to snap photos for me. Amazing and hard-working insects, are they not, though sometimes quite annoying in our gardens.
May 24, 2015 in Nature, Neat stuff, Photoworks by Marja-Leena
As you’ve started to do here, many stories possible by musing about the ants’ paths. Are they on the way to mandala-making…
Mandala-making ants! I like that, Naomi.
The big ones are cocoons I think. They are amazing, aren’t they? I imagine they were very happy living in such orderly layrinthine spirals. I feel kind of sorry for them the way they set up home so industriously in places where they’re bound to be destroyed, but I suppose they just carry off what they can and start again. I never know whether they’re good or bad in the garden, they can seem to damage the roots of things.
Lucy, I did not know those are cocoons instead of eggs. They are the most plentiful living thing on earth, I’ve heard. Some years they are particularly bad in digging up the sand between our paving stones and I have to go pour boiling water down those holes. And should you stand over one for a moment too long, they bite. They are in the lawn as well and even get in the house sometimes.
We had a few blueberry bushes struggling in pots. So we recently decided to find a spot to plant them directly in the ground. We were surprised how small the root balls were and two of the bushes had ants and their cocoons right below the roots. So maybe they do damage the roots.
The ants will inherit the earth. I both admire and abhor ants. In our garden they have caused many difficulties in our coexistence – damage of plant roots, invasion through our walls, creating mounds in grasslands, …. On the other hand, they attract the beautiful green woodpeckers and their young family every year to feast on those cocoons and grubs, and they are fascinating in themselves, as you have shown.
Olga, yes, to all you say for I too have a love/hate relationship with them. The worst around this rain forest climate of ours are the carpenter ants.
As I read your post, I did begin to wonder whether the habitat the ants had created reflected the bases of the recycling bins. And then you answered my ponderings. I have very mixed feelings about ants, smallish black ants in particular. Large blacks and all reds rouse great antipathy in me, but surely they too serve a function. (There is an implicit thought there about whether or not any species which gets out of control, is serving a useful function. Balance is required!)
But enough of my mental meanderings, the pictures are quite delightful. Now I wonder about crop circles……..?
Tom, I wonder why they felt the need to come above ground but below the bins. Was their air supply compromised? Were they creating new nests? I remember a TV program about a certain African tribe that harvested and ate ants. The honour of gathering was given to a special member, perhaps the eldest, I don’t recall.
Ditto to mixed feelings. Crop circles, mandalas, what next? Are they communcating with all the other ants in the world? 🙂
Yes, I think you are correct in your point that their air supply was compromised. It seems to be all a matter of ventilation and temperature control.
The pictures are very interesting but the subjects aren’t favorite creatures of mine either. I will have to accept they serve some sort of larger purpose. Did you scrub the area once they’d left?
Does anyone like ants, other than that African tribe?
It was raining this morning, so that probably helped clean. I forgot to go out later to sweep the sand back into the spaces between the bricks.
Our neighborhood is an ant farm.We have learned to live with the several species here,except for the fire ants, Florida ants with a wicked bite,which we have to battle.. I do like the ant art work. And I think it is cool.that your daughter is a bicyclist and public transport advocate.
I feel we live on an art farm too, though we don’t have giant ant hills and highways like on Hornby Island. Yes, Erika is a very strong environmentalist, she worked with David Suzuki Foundation for several years and continues with several other groups. We are proud of her. Thanks for checking out the link to her blog, hattie!
Extraordinary! Were those perfect white circles actually made by the ants, and if so, how? Do they walk in circles dragging the sand along? Or were the circles made by the base of bins which were standing in that space before you lifted them off? I am ignorant of ants’ habits but curious about this marvellous found art!
Natalie, I’m no expert on ants but it seems that they pushed up the sand in the areas under the bins that were depressed, ie. not touching the bricks, possibly to increase ventilation. Yes, extraordinary indeed!
Thinking about it, it seems to me that this area would first have been covered by a layer of white sand and when the garbage bin was placed on top of it and filled, the weight would have pressed the grooves on the underside of the can into the sand, making those circles. When the bin was lifted off, the circles were revealed as well as the ants which were trying to make a home (or something!) underneath. Unfortunately this conclusion, if correct, means thatr the ants had nothing to do with creating the mandala!
Natalie, that would be true if there was that layer of sand on top of the paving stones. The sand is beneath the stones and some between them, as is the usual practice when they are laid on a path or driveway. The recycling bins were on those spots just a few days. Here and there around our yard, we often see them pushing up sand in the corners of the stones for access in and out when they are working on their nests, and they do the same in the lawn. Busy critters they are!
I happily stand corrected then!
Natalie, thanks for coming back and for your interest in these fascinating hard workers, and supposed artists 🙂