2 replies to this topic

[BMM]

As my colonies have grown, there have been a few times where I've noticed that a worker emerged dead. Usually their body gets thrown in the garbage pile and/or diced up. Today I was feeding my Camponotus pennsylvanicus colony and noticed a curled up worker sitting next to the egg pile. She looked quite dead, so I attempted to fish her out of the test tube, but upon touching her she quickly got up and scrambled away. I watched her for a minute and it looks like she's unable to move her four back legs. Her antennae also appear to bent strangely, almost straight. The other workers seem to acknowledge her, but that's about it. Is this typical? I assumed that a colony would kill or evict a damaged worker such as this one. That's been my experience at least. I was considering just putting her out of her misery, but I kind of feel like I should just let the colony do its thing.

[drtrmiller]

These ants won't do anything based on the physical appearance as you see it.  They will throw even a healthy worker in the trash pile if it smells bad, however.  So this one must smell okay, for now.

[Serafine]

Like Terry said ants do not care for the look of things. That's how large food-stealing mites, beetles, moths and even some butterflies species managed to get accepted in an ant colony - if they smell right, they have really good chances to not get detected (there's a bit more to it, sometimes they need to make the right vibrations to fool the guards at the entrance to let them in or touch workers the right way to get food but in general it's the smell that counts).

As long as the disabled ant smells right and can beg other ants for food (so she doesn't starve) it will be perfectly fine for the ants. She probably can still feed the larvae and store food so there's nothing wrong with that. Someone in a german ant forum had a Messor major (it was the first one of the colony) that couldn't walk at all - the other workers just dumped whatever they wanted cracked in front of her and used her as an immobile can opener, sometimes they even dragged her around a bit in the nest. That immobile major lived for almost a year until it died of old age.