What Do Ants Do With Their Dead?
Wouterants are one of the three animals on earth that bury dead. But they do it for very different reasons. While humans bury their dead to keep the environment clean, ants do it to ensure the health of the entire colony.
Ants live in large colonies with hundreds of thousands of individual ants. These colonies have specialized worker ants called undertakers. These undertakers carry the dead from the colony to a special chamber.
The ant undertaker then takes the dead ants to another chamber, where they are dumped. These are called “middens.” They are like garbage dumps, but ants bury their dead there. They use the dead insects as a form of emergency food.
When a colony member dies, ants mourn the death. This mourning process can take a few days, but ants do not form emotional connections with dead ants the way we do. Instead, they use the pheromone released by the dead ant to tell other ants where the food is.
Dead ants do not have graveyards because ants cannot afford to bury them individually. They are buried in piles of dead ants called “middens.”
Besides preventing disease from spreading, ants also do it to keep the colony clean. In fact, they scavenge dead ants from other colonies. Depending on the species, they may use the dead insects as food or as a fertilizer. They also may wait for the bodies to decompose before using them as food.
