MadSci Network: Zoology
Query:

Re: Do ants prefer food that smell sweet, mild, or foul?

Date: Wed Mar 1 05:49:03 2000
Posted By: Trevor Cotton, Grad student, Palaeobiology Research Group, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol
Area of science: Zoology
ID: 948114673.Zo
Message:

I'm afraid I haven't been able to find out much information about Ant taste preferences. In general, ants, like most, insects prefer food that has a high sugar content. For example, many ant species farm the larvae or adults of other insects and "milk" then for a honey-like sap. The most famous such interaction is with aphids, but scale insects and butterfly larvae (caterpillars) are also sometimes involved. Many ant species also eat flower nectar. Finally, ants feed each other a "honey" that they produce in the first of their two stomachs (the crop). They will, however, eat most food - and many live mostly on starchy or high protein plant foods. In particular plant seeds are a major component of many ant species diets. These sorts of plant food would smell "mild". Finally, ants often kill and eat, or scavenge already dead, insects and other small animals. This kind of food would almost certainly smell "foul" to our sense. Another sort of food that ant's like are fungi. Some species maintain fungus gardens, e.g. leafcutter ants, inside the nest. In these cases, the leaves are "fed" to fungi, which can digest the cellulose, and the fungi are then eaten by the ants. This too, is likely to be a "foul" smelling foodstuff.

I'm afraid I don't know which of these foods is likely to be most attractive to your ants. In part, it will depend on which species of ant you have. In most cases, however, I suspect that it is the fact that there are small particles of, probably sweet, food in your house that are accessible to the ants that is encouraging them. IN general, though, ants will eat a very wide range of things...

References

Ant Feeding

Gullan, P. J., and Cranston, P. S. 1994. The Insects: An Outline of Entomology. Chapman and Hall, London.


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