#queen ant

@razette submitted: This friend made a web at the bottom of the sliding screen door to my patio so I had to move them. I put them in a pot on the otherside of the patio and left them some water. They disappeared before i realized i didnt get a good picture of their back AND face at the same time, but im 99% certain theyre a garden orbweaver and, anyway, look at that little face =3

Just as I gave up on finding the spider again, i also saw this fella climbing up the patio beam. I already had my camera out anyway, so I thought of you and snapped a pic when they stopped to groom themself. We are in SD-USA if you happen to recognize this friend, but Im not burning to know. i just wanted to share a good creature.

I didnt think I saw a stinger on their abdomen, and my phone camera cant take close ups very well. The anntenae had more of an ant-shape, imo, but its obscured by the picture quality. also what do i know lol. I bet with the size of those pinchers they could give a strong pinch! hopefully the 2 friends dont meet!

I hope they have good luck finding a place to stay warm, tho, the temps here are starting to drop real low at night!

so now my bf and i start making jokes about

"yeah man just push that to the side, put the queen in the back, don't ever touch my queen, she was there for me when nobody else was, every time i'm at a stoplight i just look into her beautiful eyes"

i am WHEEZING my sides hurt and tears are streaming down my face nobody is gonna think this is as funny as me probably but LMAO

When I was a little girl everything was "he" --but, bugs especially were "he" until proven otherwise. This is why I always push back when I suspect someone is defaulting to male pronouns or gender for hymenopterans.

When it comes to bees and ants every single one is better described as "she" (until proven otherwise.)

In bees and ants:

All worker ants/bees are female. This is 99.5 percent of all ants and bees you'll see. Easy.

The queen is female.

Males are produced for mating flights only and in ants males often have wings. In bees males are large and round with big eyes, though not as big as queens.

Since most ants and bees you will see in the wild tend to be workers they are all generally female. So, if an ant took some of your cupcake. "She's trying to take my cupcake." makes more sense than "He's trying to take my cupcake." (Let her have it. She deserved it.) Male bees and ants do not forage or help build nests, they fly, they mate, then they die.

But, it's not always so cut and dry. Sometimes an ant will be born as gynandromorph... which means they are literally split down the middle half male/ half female. Nature is complex. It's more fun when don't just paste human patterns and expectations on to nature without thinking about I think.

This isn't *that* important as ants don't even have a concept of gender like the human concept of gender, but naturally if you are dealing with fictional eg. "ant people" you have some thinking to do.

Most popular children's books and movies choose to make the worker ants a mix of male and female. Sometimes even all male. In some books they insist all the solider ants are male and the females only work in the nursery. BORING. And then they *always* make a male ant the protagonist. Who would want to watch a movie about bugs where every character is female? Only little boys like bugs. Duh.

This same media will choose to make the queen their "ruler" ... because that's how human queens work, some will even add a king ant... which is just... I don't even know what to say. The queen mated with like ten or fifteen males years ago and they are all dead. That's more interesting!

I was checking in on Betty's colony to see what they were up to and what the fuck is that that I see?! A queen??? BETTY????

Also her nest is STOCKED on pupa.

And the colony has started a little trash pile in their outworld. I'm so proud of them~