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When is an Ant Farm Like a Carnation Colored Kitty?

by Brian Barnette, Chief Naturalist

Back in 1974, John Denver recorded a song about the joys of farm living. The first lines went like this:

Well, life on the farm is kinda laid back.
Ain't much an old' country boy like me can't hack...

Now, if he had been singing about an ant farm instead of the human variety, the song would have started a little differently. For instance, even a casual observation reveals that life on an ant farm is anything but "laid back". The little critters are constantly on the go, tunneling, foraging, and scurrying about. And ant farms are virtually devoid of country "boys". Nearly all of the ants in a colony are females. And as for there not being much they "can't hack" - well . . .

(break)

As a complement to our spring exhibit "Animals As Architects", we wanted to add a giant ant farm. We gave the assignment to Eddie Bassett, whose company, Glasco, has worked on many projects for the Museum over the years. Eddie eagerly accepted the challenge, and soon we had a three foot by four foot by one half inch structure, ready to fill with sand and ants.

The sand we had on hand - it just needed sifting, dampening, and pouring. Surprisingly, it only took about three gallons of sand to fill the farm; unfortunately, it had to be added through some fairly small holes, which made for a very time consuming process.

The ants were another matter. We wanted harvester ants, widely recognized as champion tunnelers; but since the exhibit opened in January, active ant mounds were in rather short supply. Our local ants were safely tucked away, waiting for winter to pass, in their underground homes - some of which may be as much as 20 feet deep! Collecting a colony from the wild was out of the question.

Internet to the rescue! A quick search located a company in Utah that supplies live harvester ants to ant farm aficionados as well as reptile raisers (ants being a preferred menu item for several species of lizards). A few clicks of the mouse, and 500 western harvester ants were on their way to Dallas.

At this point, I'd like to pause and say a few words about harvester ants in general, and western harvesters in particular. Harvester ants range over much of North and South America. Of the 60 known species, 26 are found in the United States. Twelve of these are native to Texas, including the western harvester ant, found in the Panhandle, and the red harvester ant, common in central Texas.

Harvester ants get their name from their habit of gathering seeds from grasses and other plants and storing them in their mounds. Some nineteenth century naturalists thought that they actually planted the seeds of their favorite plants beside their mound to insure a steady food supply, but that behavior has never been documented. They also eat a variety of insects, including fire ants, and freely scavenge for carrion.

In addition to "harvesting" seeds, these ants are known for building distinctive mounds at the entrance to their nests. The mound is built up from gravel and debris. The largest recorded western harvester mound was three feet high. The area around the mound is usually cleared of all vegetation. This cleared area may range in size from a few inches to as much as 50 feet in diameter for the western harvester. A single mound may have only one entrance, or as many as eleven. Some species plug the entrance at night or during storms; others plug the entrance of rival colonies, to get a "head start" on the day's foraging!

The purpose of the mound and clearing is unknown. The mound may help prevent flooding, or it may serve as an incubator for the eggs. Some species, including the western harvester, coat their mound with saliva to waterproof it. Many theories have been put forth to explain the clearing: it helps maintain temperature and humidity; it protects from fire and predators; it serves as an area for drying seeds or eggs; it prevents unwelcome shade from plants, or damage from their roots; and it serves as a target for flying males from other colonies. Some species cover the mound with charcoal, perhaps to aid in heat retention or to absorb chemical markers produced by the ants to communicate with each other.

Beneath the mound, the western harvester ant colony creates an extensive network of tunnels and chambers, which are used as food storage areas, nurseries, and garbage areas. Tunnels can be as much as a half inch wide, while chambers can be up to six inches long. When the garbage areas are filled, they are sealed off from the rest of the nest. Some species periodically empty the waste from the nest, piling it up at the edge of the clearing around the mound.

One other attribute of the harvester ant deserves mention - its sting. Those in the know consider it one of the most painful of all North American insects, much worse even than the fire ant. Some scientists place it on a par with the tarantula hawk wasp and the velvet ant (a wingless wasp sometimes called the "cow killer" because of its painful sting). Which brings us, in a roundabout way, back to the giant ant farm at the Museum . . .

After filling the farm with sand, it was time to add the ants. Various sources recommended chilling the ants in a refrigerator before handling them, to slow their little bodies down. I tried that, but they kept waking up before I could get them to the farm. I tried using a makeshift paper funnel to guide them into the narrow container, but it didn't work very well. Soon we had ants scrambling all over the floor around the farm. But we persevered, scooping and dumping, until all of the ants were deposited in their new home.

All went well for several days; the ants began creating tunnels and mounds, just as we hoped they would. Then - disaster struck! When Eddie the glass man came out to add a permanent cap to the farm, one whole side suddenly came unglued and separated from the other. The resulting catastrophic collapse of their colony must have seemed to the ants like a combination of the San Francisco earthquake, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, and the Cowboys' last season rolled into one.

Eddie and David Murphy of our Exhibits Department reacted quickly, scooping out handfuls of sand and ants and putting them in a plastic bucket. Both were stung for their efforts, but they kept at it until all the ants and sand had been transferred to the bucket. Eddie then re-glued the glass and clamped it in place. Within 24 hours, we were ready to re-place the ants.

Only now, the ants and the sand were mixed. It really wasn't practical to try to separate them, so I slowly funneled them back in together. I hoped that the ants would be able to keep on top of the sand as it trickled in, but it soon became obvious that it was not to be. I would have to hope that they could survive being buried alive long enough to tunnel their way out.

The old Jimmy Dean song "Big Bad John" started running through my mind . . .

Finally, after hours of spooning sand through the tiny access holes, the task was completed. Now it was "wait and see".

By the next morning, a few small tunnels were visible. Although only a few ants could be seen at any one time, over the next week, the tunnels began to grow, and the number of active ants increased. As I write this, two weeks after the cave-in, the remaining ants seem to doing well, and the tunnel system is impressively complex. A number of the fallen workers have been brought to the surface, but whether they died in the cave-in, or subsequently, I don't know. But I do know the answer to the riddle in the title.

Assuming that the ant farm has suffered an accident like ours, that "carnation colored kitty" is a euphemism for the Pink Panther, and with apologies to Henry Mancini, they are alike in that they share a common theme:

Dead ant . . . dead ant . . . dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant, dead ant.

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