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Beheaded ant
Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2015 9:42 pm
by Deansie26
Some may not like this but I thought it was interesting, I was feeding my old Acromyrmex colony and one ant that I hadn't noticed got caught in the door and was be-headed. the ant with out a head was still able to right itself when I tried to over turn it etc, was very strange. Which means its balancing organs for detecting its position/ balance may be on its body.
https://youtu.be/7j2nqtHg6Nk
Re: Beheaded ant
Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2015 3:56 pm
by Jackie62
Talking of beheading, I found a lot of headless males the other day in the dump tank while cleaning it out....is this how the males are killed by any chance?
Re: Beheaded ant
Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2015 4:29 pm
by Acromyrmexbob
If you behead a male his sex organs immediately protrude. This can be used as a technique for artificial insemination. Work needing to be done I think. I mentioned elsewhere that you can knock out a queen with CO2 and then try to introduce a beheaded male with a view to mating them. I tried this with Acromyrmex once without luck.
At first read I was wondering why you would do this but I suppose it could be useful to obtain mated queens from 2 captive mature colonies, any other uses?