Do ants have special dances like bees?

So a couple days ago, I left out a crumb of food to see what would find it, and it attracted two carpenter ants. Not sure if one is a male and the other is a female, but they do look different. Anyway, I started videoing because the one with the bigger mandibles started wiggling its abdomen (twerking): https://youtu.be/ouFd5rP2KjI

Is this some type of communication with the other ant? Is it releasing some chemical that tells other ants that there’s food nearby? Is it just excited that it found some food? I want to know what’s going on in its little brain :)

Edit: the observation for it is here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/85679597

1 Like

Both are wingless workers (sterile females), probably bigger one is the soldier with bigger head (?), but anyway yes, something social is going on! On photos they’re feeding together, as the way of passing info about the food, so colony has similar idea on what is going on and where.

4 Likes

Ants don’t dance like bees do, no. They leave scent trails to where food is. Bees can’t do that, hence the dancing.

(Edit: as far as we know, ants don’t dance like bees do. It’s certainly possible there’s a species somewhere that does, but this isn’t something that’s been observed.)

2 Likes

There are more than 10K known ant species, and probably many more unknown, and they are quite behaviorally and ecologically varied. I think it is hard to rule out the possibility that some ants somewhere dance to convey information. But most ants don’t, so far as we can tell.

7 Likes

Ants dont dance like bees to attract mates.
Ants leave a strong smell from their gaster that attracts the females

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.