Leaf Cutting Ant Forum

My young Atta colony are still being given leaves from the adjacent unit as they are being stubborn with the feeding table, but over the last week they have been venturing down on it and have started to move around with a little confidence if that makes sense.
Today though I decided to clean the foraging table with kitchen roll and water. Now will the ants wonder around like they where? Nope, they are very causious, like they have never been there, looking for danger with every step-that's how it looks to me when I watch them.

So I guess this may be down to me washing away the pheromone trails they had laid. When I had my last Atta colony there was loads of ants, I'd block them, clean the table, remove the block and they would come stampeding out in a rage!

Just a note for best practice really, best not to clean foraging areas while a colony is small.

Heres an interesting stat. The Leaf Cutting Ant trail pheromone is so potent that one milligram of it is enough to lay a trail 3 times around the earth for ants to follow.

Acromyrmexbob wrote:Heres an interesting stat. The Leaf Cutting Ant trail pheromone is so potent that one milligram of it is enough to lay a trail 3 times around the earth for ants to follow.

Right, who's up for giving that a go...?

It should be easy with Easyjet and that Russian airline that crashed a while ago. By the way, I flew Easyjet to Spain this week. On the way back they asked for volunteers to miss the flight as they were too heavy. Not surprisingly noone offered so they threw off 3 golfers from a party of 8 and stranded them in Malaga until Friday! Nice.

Andrew clocks up the most miles so I nominate him to test this lol

Its not me you should be feeling sorry for on my 3 times around the world trip with a cotton bud trailing behind me. Its the poor ant that has to prove it works by following it.