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Fight to the death?

M38A1

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Scott
Watched these two for about five minutes today and I can’t figure out what I’m looking at for a series of images I shot this evening. It’s an ant, with what I think is a juvenile ant on top of it. The juvenile ant seems to only have three of six legs. I can’t tell if the juvenile is biting the right front of the big one to hang on. I don’t think it is, but the juvenile is definitely missing legs. Then I wondered if it was a fight to the death between the two and the big one chomped off the legs of the little one. But there’s no stubs, like the little one never had them. A parental ‘love’ thing in trying to carry the juvenile? I’m stumped. Thoughts?

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I have zero idea why the crazy colors on this one.... just a huge crop for the most part.
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The little ant is more stumped. This is interesting. Maybe a mating ritual like the black widow spider?
 
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I'd stay the strong helping the weak

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
The large ant is actually an ant, but the small "ant" is actually a wooden sculpture made by the true ant. The ant's name is Herman Finsterheimer. World famous ant sculptor.

What your are seeing here is Herman trying to get his sculpture from his studio to the gallery. What you thought was a tussle was actually Herman bearing the hefty weight of his piece on his back. He was going to have help in making this move, but, alas, his friends left him high and dry.

You noticed the sculpted ant is missing its legs. This is by design. Herman left those back at the studio to save some weight.

It's amazing what goes on in the world when you stop to take a pause and see what is actually going on. You captured it all with your usual stellar photography!

Hope this helps.
 
Cool shot. Ants are tough because they move so much, are so small, and trying to get much of anything focused is a HUGE challenge!
 

Taking a que from Gina, I wrote the gal in the article about this and sent her the images. This was her response:




Hi Scott,

I apologize that it took me so long to get back to you, I've been traveling.

I don't know precisely what is going on here but I can hopefully provide a little insight. The ant on top is not a juvenile. "Juvenile" ants are called larvae, like other insects, and they don't look anything like the adults. Here's what they look like: https://www.google.com/search?q=ant...objdAhWq4IMKHRcmBaYQ_AUIDigB&biw=1301&bih=780

Once the larvae pupate and become adults, they never grow after that. That's how I know the one on top isn't just a young ant, it's not going to grow up to look like the one on the bottom.

It's not uncommon for ants to lose legs, and when they do, there often are not visible stubs. So I think the most likely thing is that this ant on top lost three of its legs, rather than it never having them. My guess quick is they were fighting and got stuck together a bit.

There are several ant forums with knowledgeable people on facebook and elsewhere if you're interested in learning more! Search for ants and/or myrmecology (the study of ants). I'm impressed with the quality of your photos (I know it's hard to get good shots of ants). These are good enough that someone with a bit more knowledge about Texas ants could easily identify the species, which would also give you more information if you're interested.

Best,
Helen



So with this, I suppose I'll log back into the devil (Facebook) and find an ant group and ask the same questions about what's going on here. Will report back what I find.
 
big one is a carpenter ant and his passenger may be also as worker carpenter ants come in several sizes
 
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