An idea!

Hi! I’m Katherine Auld, the founder of NWA Space. I have been thinking for several months that I want to share all the crazy and different science topics that I find interesting. So each week I’m going to share something cool and different with you. This week is ants.

My family and I visited Garden of the Gods at Colorado Springs and saw a sign about honeypot ants being first identified in the Garden in 1881. I got curious…

We all know that many types of insects store liquid, pollen, nectar, and other forms of food to be eaten at a later date. But honeypot ants are really strange. One specialized type of worker ant stores the food inside its own body. The specialized ants are called repletes, or plerergates, and other workers feed them so much food their abdomen swells up like a balloon. The balls that look like amber-colored grapes in this picture by Derrick Coetzee are an ant.

Turns out that the abdomen of ants consists of hard plates that are connected by a flexible membrane. As the repletes become engorged the membrane stretches. But you can still see the hard plates.

Honeypot ants are found in arid, semiarid, and even woodland forests that experience long dry periods. The repletes are found deep within the colony. The abdomen swells so much that the replete becomes immobile and must be cared for by the other workers. When the stored food is needed, workers stroke the antennae of the honeypot ant, causing it to regurgitate the stored liquid. Seems both gross and fascinating.

But then that’s science.

More next week.