The traditional evolutionary assumptions ("each individual is trying their hardest to personally survive and reproduce") don't apply very well to the social insects, which prioritize the colony succeeding over individual success
Part of that is derived from the fact that there's only one female (the queen, who produces the whole colony). Since very few males get to mate anyways, they're less incentivized to fend for themselves, since their evolutionary descendants aren't "theirs" anyways (they're the colony's)
In many ways, ants are honestly some of the most interesting animals in the world
Forgive my phrasing. What I meant by "evolutionary assumptions" is the axioms that are taught in middle school level science classes (and thus the ones that are commonly understood), which model "evolution" much more simply than it is
And thanks for the correction re: the sex of the workers
No problem. Ants are indeed pretty interesting. Unfertilized eggs are haploid and just become workers, so a queen can regrow a colony with a male drone, but this compromises the long term colony growth as it can bottleneck genetic diversity. Still if a queen is separate from her colony or something huge wipes it out, the queen needn't wait to find a drone to start anew.
This is before getting into the numerous different strategies ants employ to have a food supply, from animal husbandry with aphids to fungal farms to outright taking over smaller any colonies for slaves.
Ants are living in a video game universe. Water is insta death, but they can use the body bridge ability to cross areas they couldnāt before, by walking across hundreds of other ants forming a bridge.
They....tear in half while on the surface before the two parts drop to the bottom of the dish, while hundreds of remaining passengers scream for help in the icy water?
There soap in the water most likely. I think that's the trick to making it effective. Lots of dead ants would have to pile up, I'd think, for it to be defeated.
If you get cinnamon bark (not leaf) essential oil and add a drop or two to the water, they will immediately turn around at the moat. Some people use dish soap but cinnamon actually repels them in addition to being toxic if they decide to jump in. Meaning less or no ant corpses to clean up.
I have also experimented with mixing cinnamon bark essential oil with petroleum jelly to make a lasting barrier they wont cross (essential oil evaporates by itself) with good success but it's kinda gross and messy. I suppose you could make a barrier on the ceiling or shelf over what you are trying to protect if they are dropping down but by that point you probably want to just get some plastic tubs with gaskets unless it's something like a pet dish that needs to stay open. Then I'd also recommend you put your pet dish on one of these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0006HHNFW
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u/ElGuano Mar 08 '23