#farming ants

These Apterostigma ants are really strange girls. I mean REALLY strange. They live under leaves rather like weaver ants, but they build a nest of fungi ... like leaf cutter ants... but they don't cut leaves-- they hide their nests with bits of bark.

No other ants are like this. Amazing. This one is called by the species name "electropilosum" look at her and you can see why.

These ants move very slowly, gently tending their little farms. Just lanky hairy girls trying to make it in the jungle. You gotta love them. There are a nice collection of these ants on iNaturalist.

Some of them do seem to use leaves in their fungus, others do not. They are also on the larger size, towering over smaller ants in many photos.

Their nests are made of the fungi they eat and unlike anything else I know that ants might build.

Carpenter Ants are Really Cool Because They are Great Farmers shows readers a short video of several carpenter ants “farming” or “herding” aphids. This is a very interesting behavior that isn’t seen in most other insects, including other ants.

Carpenter ants are very common here in north central Florida, and I see them all over the place in most of the habitats I’ve visited. They show up fairly frequently in my photos. Most of the time that’s on purpose, but several times I’ve only discovered them when I went to edit the images. Carpenter ants can and will bite, but if you don’t pester them too much, they will usually leave you alone,…

After watching a documentary on ants, and observing how many ant species Farm smaller insects species for their Honey Dew. I thought about species that is in a symbiotic relationship with a larger sentient species. They essentially Farm the smaller and protect them while the smaller species provides food.