21 August 2018

IFLScience: Bizarre Video Shows Ants Performing A Strange Ritual Around A Dead Bee

The video in question features a sadly-expired bee surrounded by pink petals. As you watch, you realize the petals are rustling, and are actually covered in ants. As you continue watching, you see that the ants are the ones dragging the petals over to the bee and placing them in a circle around it. [...]

For ants, once they have detected a dead or dying comrade by the chemicals released from them, the undertakers will carry the dead outside the colony and take them a safe distance away, often to the same place – an ant cemetery if we're being anthropomorphic. For bees, it's not quite so romantic. The undertakers drag them out of the hive and then fly off and dump them, which could be what happened here. [...]

"[It's] hard to say as the locality and type of ant is not clear, but most probably they are harvester ants (vegetarian) taking petals back to their nest as food, and a dead bee has somehow ended up on top of the nest entrance," he told IFLScience. "That is to say the bee may be more of an obstacle for the ants if it is preventing them taking food down their burrow."

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