Joe, Reread my post. They make isolated grave middens down there to place dead ants in. That's why..
Edgar On Jun 23, 2013, at 8:09 PM, Joe wrote: > Edgar, > > That's interesting. > > I see that it may take as much (long) as three days for the distasteful Oleic > acid to form after an ant's death. > > The ant bodies I saw being carried back to the anthills were bodies of ants > recently killed in battles with ants of other colonies. The battles and their > casualties are what made a high flux of bodies being carried back even at all > noticeable to me, in my observations of this going-on. > > I've seen this behavior in colonies in NJ, and in AZ, in both large red and > black and colonies, and in colonies of the small brown ants. > > Maybe an ant body just a short time after killing is indeed palatable food; > otherwise, I don't know why ants would bring them to the anthill and down > inside, as they visibly do. > > --Joe > > > Edgar Owen <edgarowen@...> wrote: > > > > Most ant species, particularly the ones we are most exposed to, do not > > practice cannibalism - > >
