From the Life of the Ants

There is a completely strange world that everybody of us, humans, would like to avoid in the majority of the cases. It's the world of insects. Most of these beings are disgusting and terrifying. They are our nightmare of the daytime. We prefer to be as far as possible from almost all of them.

One of the species of insects that is not so much hated by humans as others is the ant.

Since I live in the countryside, I have to stay in very close contact with many species of insects. Ants create many troubles in our life. They make passages in the stones of the walls, they eat wooden parts of the windows, they feel free to eat everything they find and everywhere and so they make many damages in the house.

But if you begin to observe their behaviour, it becomes very interesting. They have many things common with us. Ants like sugar and can't resist when they have it in front of them. Ants have cemeteries and have special stuff to maintain them clean. They suffer from the diseases in the same way as we do...

Now, this time, I wanted to tell you how the ants drink.

This summer was particularly hot. There was not water and we tried to conserve it, too.
When Stassi was alive we had always a big pod with water near the door because not only Stassi but all the hens and other animals and birds came to drink from that pot. After the death of Stassi, we often forget to put new water there. But there are other jugs normally.

Once, I noticed this scene:

Ants went and went there. The row was sometimes very long, all round the side of the vase.  When I came with the camera, I just had not time to focus it because the ants finished to drink and went away.

An Experiment Proved Ants Are As Humans

Maybe you remember my post about Terrible Ants that all wanted to come to live this summer in our house? Now I'll tell you hove I wanted to eliminate them.

My husband left one day a peel of the melon on the window. It remaind there all the moring and when I came in the kitchen to cook, it was full of the ants. I thought: till they will be busy to eat on this peel, they will not explore other possibilities to find something to eat. And I left them where they were.

Next morning when I came in the kitchen I had time to observe what they are doing. It was so interesting! All the ants (very little this time) were dead on the melon. I was surprized because nobody killed them. I left them to eat so much they want.

Than I noticed some of them moving a little. Than, some of those moving rised and began to go in the direction of their hole. I wanted to see more. Ans that is what I understood:

the ants ate so much they could and than fall on the same place with their stomaches full so that they could not move more. Than, they were able to eat more and they ate. One of the times they could rise up they remembered to turn back in their anthill. Anthole.

I laughd. The ants are so similar to us...

Terrible Ants

«главное-дети!» на Яндекс.Фотках

You probably think that this is a little nice animal, an insect and that I'll tell you a fable or a nice story...

You are wrong. I have now not photos but I think I'll have the possibility to take them n the next days. This insect is a real problem for us this summer.

Not only they eat all the wooden parts of the house. All parts of the house are covered with the carpets of the ants.
First, till some days ago, they were many but walking in a queue here or there. If you kill them here they go out there. I did not want to kill them, they are alive beings. My buddhist friends told me they don't like talk. And I put it everywhere they went out.

Than they became more numerous. And went out from everywhere. But it was possile to do something.

Today we have a real invasion. Enter in the room and see all the table covered with ants! I called my husband and scold him because I thought he left a piece of bisquit on the table. But than I enter in an other room and see an other surface completely covered with the ants!

Ants, ants and ants everywhere... I feel so that I'm covered with ants too...

Spider On The Window

Do you like spiders?

Sincerely I don't. I don't like insects generally. Probably I'm not right. You know, I don't see them as "normal" life. I don'tlike snakes and lizards too. But I'm able to think that this is a poor soul that the God had humbled this way. Is it because insects have not "normal" eyes?

So or not so, but the spiders are for me a reason to swear with my husband. Because we live among the nature, the house is full of all this natural beauty. Even scorpions pass to make a visit here, sometimes, not often fortunatelly.

Spiders are something incredible. I clean the room and find all the nets some hours later. And my husband is very angry because, he says, spiders catch mosquitos and flys. He has even a very protected one, great! about 1 cm black spider that lives near wc. And it's forbidden to me to touch it! Brrr...

But when I made this photo, I thought, my husband is right at least in part. Look, what a great job makes a spider if undisturbed.

This is a sad spider from the cartoon for little children "About a spider that nobody wanted to be his friend". It was very-very sad and chanted a very sad song about it.

Песенка паучка:
Что за грустная картина, кто ее нарисовал?
Я сижу на паутине, пучеглазый как сова.
Я совсем один на свете, в доме сыро и темно
даже солнышко поверте, не глядит в мое окно.

Я давно держу в секрете, но прошу о том молчок.
Говорят бывают дети, им не страшен паучок
Я на солнце и на ветер убежал бы из сетей,
Если б встретил, если б встретил замечательных друзей.

Stick insects -so interesting!

On 31 December I wrote a post Animals of Campania: Monster without name
where asked you if you know this insect.

Today finally I know it's name. One of the magazines about life in a village published it's photo and an article. I wanted to know more about it, and here the very surprising things I read.

Stick insect or walking stick so as the leave insects are relatives of mantis. They are from the family Phyliidae and live mostly in tropics. There are 3000 described species today and nobody knows how many of not described are there, even from those that are in museums! In Europe there are about 20 species, 2 of them I've seen in my garden.

One of the sticks is the longest insect in the world and is a female Pharnacia serratipes that measured 555 mm. Other, Pharnacia kirbyi, from Indonesia (have to ask well known to you Berry, author of the post about orangutans: how can he live with these neighbours?) arrives till 36 cm.

These insects are vegetarians.
They eat leaves of one branch. And are SOOOOOOO LAZY to move to kill themselves with hunger but do not move in an other place. The only period when they move is when they go out from the egg and look for their home. It lasts some days.

Many species have only females.
They can make their kids with a male too, but if the girl do not find a male, she makes eggs without male. In this case she gives life to clones, all females. The female makes eggs all the life, 3-12 months (if I understood good). They are similar to seems or excrement. And even the eggs are too slow: they need about 2-18 months to develop.

Imagine, there are persons that raise them!!!!!
And there are even FARMS cultivating them!

Ants-Suicide

In my post Rats attracted by cats I just wrote about parasits that provoke abnormal behaviour of some animals ( rats and snails) that begin to do everything possible to be cought and eaten. The story I'll tell you today is one more study about these clever parasits.

These are the protagonists of this tragic for ants story:

One of the species of ants, Cephalotes atratus, lives in Peru and Panama. They are normally black and, as many ants, provided with efficient arms, so that birds do not eat them.

Nematode, the second main character, is a roundworm (80 000 species with 15000 of them parasitic)

2 researchers,Yanoviak and Michael E. Kaspari, noticed in the colonies 5% of strange ant with red abdomen.
They, ants, went in a place where birds could see them, took the pose you see on the photo, (that means "danger" in ant language), the birds thought those are red fruits they normally eat (and they say they are really very similar) -and eat them.

The researchers opened many ants with red abdomen and saw them FULL of the eggs of a species of parasitic nematode.
Nematode needs to pass to birds to complet their cycle of life.
Ants become infected when they feed to ant larvae the bird feces containing parasite eggs.

Source and ants photo
Nematode photo

Animals of Campania: Monster without name

I have to recognize: I don't like insects.

I don't like them but I admire them.
Look at this monster I found yesterday when went in the yard to cut roses. It was about 7-8 cm long. I don't know why it was not in a warm place. I thought, they had to sleep, insects, in winter.

Yesterday the wether was good enough. About 11-12°C, sunny. I wanted to stay out and decided to cut the bushes of roses. And... saw this.

I saw similar insects befor. More little, about 3 cm, braun, as a dry blade and without feeler, I think.
An other, big as this one, was mantis. And green too. That I know.
Enormous are here locusts, till 10 cm, I think.
About scorpions I wrote in an other post.

Maybe somebody can say something about these species?



Related posts:
Animals of Campania (territory)
Animals of Campania in my house and yard (scorpions)
Animals of Campania. Bats
Animals of Campania. Barn Owl
Animals of Campania. Snakes