The Ants Go Marchin'

It was an amazingly beautiful day out earlier, and I decided to eat my lunch outside, in "my spot" - past the parkinglot, in some grass down a hill with a little creek and small dam that runs by a few hundred feet further.  Beautiful spot that I'll miss when I leave this job.

I put my book down, and took a bite out my sandwich before getting to reading.  As I breathed in the air, the smell of the grass and the water nearby, slowly chewing, i took in the sites around me.  The trees leaves gently rustling in the wind, the clouds drifting by, the planes climbing into the sky at a nearby airport, and I saw the ants skittering accross this brick divider; seperating manicured green grass from the dirt and leaves of the field nearer the stream.

As soon as spring got into full swing, I noticed these ants running back and forth on these bricks - I call it "the ant highway" because that's definitely what it is!  Ants run seemingly as fast as they can from the left, and others burdened with treasures of dirt, rocks, food, and whatever else make their trek back from the right.  Really fun to watch since you can definitely see the order in their plan.  

Sometimes, ants going opposite directions meet up with each other accidentally.  There's a breif pause as their antennas flick over each others in a kind of greeting, and then they make a slight correction in course and go their own ways back to work.

I've learned how ants follow each other before, finding food and returning to their hills and all.  They basically all leave a chemical "scent" behind them as they run, and then other ants follow the trail of the scent.  The more ants that end up going to and from a direction, the stronger the scent, so the better the trail.  It's pretty interesting to think about... We "leave behind" light that's reflected off our bodies, and that's how we follow each other.  Ants leave behind a "scent" - according to them scientific descriptions.

So I was staring at this scene, eating a sandwhich on this beautiful day, and I start wondering how they know which direction they're going.  The scent-method of seeing isn't the most accurate - sometimes some little fellas get off the trail and kinda go a little crazy, weaving this way and that until the scent's picked back up - so I wondered: how do they know which direction's towards home, and which is from? 

I pondered this for a moment, thinking maybe there was more to it than we thought, an extra sense, but then I saw him: An ant going away from home, with a big piece of dirt in his little mandibles!  Was he mixed up?  Did he have another idea?  Was he rebelling?  I decided to follow him.

 I left the rest of my food behind, and started crouching on the ground in front of the highway, following the little guy as he went.  Other, empty-handed ants, kept racing past him, and he didn't seem to notice.  Sometimes he'd run head on into another ant going the "right" way, they did their little greeting dance and kept going.  Twice, though, he got wrestled a little; they rolled around together, but kept going.  Was it from the added weight they each had, or were the other ants saying "No, this way!" ?  I kept following.

He lost sight of the trail a few times, got caught up in cracks between the bricks on the way.  Unfortunately, I lost him in one of the cracks... Did he get caught?  Go a different direction?  Drop his prize, and continue on the correct way for more? I'm not really sure... Experiment over. :-/

I did follow the rest of the ants to their destination, though. THey all ended up at a couple of little holes dug into the ground by the bricks. They'd go in, and come back out holding a piece and running back towards home.  I figured since I followed them this long, I might as well check out their whole journey.

So I followed a few of the ants.  Some were faster than others, some could go faster with bigger chunks than others; i really felt like they all had a unique personality.  It was amazing watching them navigate the cracks between the bricks. There was always a spot where bricks touched, and they would seem to make a bee-line straight towards that area where the most other ants had gone before.  Very cool system they got there.

Their final destination for the pieces they were carrying was a few hundred feet away from the pick-up site.  It seemed to be a larger crack between the bricks.  I peered in tothere, my shadow over the highway making a couple of ants twitch for a second, and it was stuffed with dead grass and the little pebbles and rocks.  Was it their "home", or just the dump-site for the tunneling they were doing elsewhere?  As soon as I asked the question, i saw an ant coming from the Other direction, carrying dead grass. He went into the crack, dropped his nesting, and ran back out to the grass area to get some more.  

I didn't get much reading done. barely was able to finished my sandwich actually haha, but it was a lot of fun!  I really like looking into other creature's worlds, and i was grateful for the ants to show me.  The really interesting thing was when I looked a little closer?  There was So much life running around on those bricks!  Some spiders I think were hunting the ants...at least following them around, darting towards the sound they must make in the bricks.  Lots of smaller spiders, some eensy weensy millipede type things...and the ants running back and forth on their highway, with their one purpose in mind.

It was a great look into a world not often paid attention to.  It was a magical lunch period :)

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        ants turning brick into highway,
        do they know where they're going?
        they stop to say hello,
        their day makes me smile