What do forest and domestic ants eat?

What do ants eat in a house? And what do they eat in the wild? Answering these questions will be quite simple if you know the type of insect. For example, there are vegetarian ants that eat only plant foods. There are ruthless predators hunting not only for insects, but even for larger animals.

Ants - Predators

What do predator ants eat? Consider the diet of their food on the example of stray nomad ants and bulldog ants.

Roving ants

Wandering ants, or as they are also called, nomads are typical representatives of predatory insects. They eat exclusively animal food and feed their brood to it. Their diet is mainly as follows:

• insects and their larvae;
• invertebrates;
• small lizards;
• frogs;
• flightless chicks.

They can also enjoy the corpses of fallen animals encountered on their way. Any wounded, immobilized creature who had the misfortune of being on the road with these predators will also go to food for vagrants.

Bulldog Ants

Bulldog ants are another bright representative of predators. They feed their larvae with insects and small invertebrates. An interesting structure was stung by these ants. They are stretched forward like the jaws of a crocodile. With their help, bulldogs hunt and also make jumps.

Protein food, which adults bring to the nest, is vital for larvae of this species. Without it, a young insect does not grow, and its development stops.

Interesting fact! There are ants that use their relatives as a living reservoir for food. They are called honey. In times of abundance, worker ants feed several hundred of their comrades to the state of a small barrel. At the same time, "live canned food" lose their mobility and are constantly in the nest. During a drought, they begin to release previously accumulated reserves in the form of syrupy secretions, thus saving the colony from thirst and starvation.

Herbivorous

What do herbivorous ants eat? Vegetarianism is widely developed in the ant family. Plant foods feed on species such as reaper ants, woodworms, and leaf cutters.

Reaper ants

Reapers - eat only plant foods. The basis of their nutrition is:

• grass seeds;
• cereals of cereals;
• dry fruits of plants.

Having brought the found food into the nest, they clean it of the shells, grind it into flour and moisten it with saliva. With this semblance of dough they feed their larvae.

Woodworms

Carpenter ants, according to their name, eat the wood of dead, rotten trees and gum. At the same time, they equip themselves with a spacious dwelling, literally full of stumps and trunks through their jaws. Often they attack human houses built of wood.

The endosymbiotic bacterium that lives in their intestines helps them digest roughage. This feature of digestion distinguishes them from a number of other herbivorous insects.

Leaf Cutters

Leaf cutter ants are not herbivorous in the truest sense of the word. They do not eat leaves that are cut from trees for food, as was thought until recently.They need plant mass in order to grow mycelium in their underground farms.

Cutting off the leaf, the ant drags it into its nest, where it grinds and moistens with saliva. On such a plant substrate, mycelium is grown, which the leaf cutters eat. An interesting fact is that they do not eat the fruit body of the fungus and bite it from the surface of the mycelium at the stage of budding.

Interesting fact! In nature, there is such a unique type of insect as the Dracula ant. They got their name because adult insects feed on sap, which they suck from their own larvae! However, this does not harm the latter at all, and they quickly replenish body weight due to the abundant nutrition of insects, which are brought to them by bloodthirsty nannies.

Omnivores

Along with the existence of predators and vegetarians in the ant family, omnivorous species of these insects are widespread in nature. For example, such as the pharaoh ant, forest red and garden black.

Pharaoh ants

The diet of the pharaohs, or, as they are also called, house ants, is distinguished by its versatility. Everything suits them in food! In a city apartment, they eat the following products:

• bread
• groats
• groceries
• sweets
• oil
• meat products
  
• cheese
• sausage
• cottage cheese.

You can list for a long time, since there is no product that could not chew the strong jaws of these insatiable gluttons. In the wild, where there is no such wide choice, their diet changes somewhat.

What do pharaonic ants eat in nature? The same as their forest counterparts - red ants:

• insects and their larvae;
• grass seeds;
• cereal grains;
• small invertebrates.

In this case, the separation of food by age. Larvae get protein-rich foods; adult insects prefer carbohydrate foods that provide a lot of energy.

Forest red ants

Forest red ants are also omnivores. They feed on both insects and plant foods. At the same time, during the year they make supplies, preparing for a long wintering inside the anthill.

They try to feed the larvae before the onset of cold weather, since they need protein food for development, consisting of insects and their larvae. Adult working ants feed mainly on sweet aphid secretions.

Black garden ant

Garden ants are interesting in that they are engaged in "animal husbandry" - they breed aphids, which they feed on. They take care of them, protect them from predatory insects and bad weather.

“Milking” occurs as follows: the ant creeps to the aphid and tickles its belly with its antennae. In response to this, she gives off a drop of sweet paddy, which the "shepherd" immediately drinks.

Unique footage of feeding black garden ants with aphid secretions can be seen in this video: