Ants do dairy farming

Do you know that ants also do dairy farming like human beings? In dairy farming, cattle need to be fed regularly to get milk from them. Cattle are often released in pastures for them to feed and ruminate. Ants do exactly that; of course their cattle are certain insects. Mealy bugs and aphids are regularly nurtured by ants. Mealy bugs and Aphids are pests on a plant. They continuously suck the sap of plants on which they feed. Though Mealy bugs and Aphids are insects, they are almost immobile. As such, they remain in one place and suck the sap out of a plant till the plant dies.

Mealy bugs

Wingless Aphids

Winged Aphids

Many types of ants come to their rescue. Ants lift younger generation of these insect pests and deposit them on fresh growth of a plant. Now, why do the ants do this? Are they doing social work to save the insects? Not at all! In nature no one helps others unless they have some benefit. These pests are nurtured by the ants because, when these pests feed on plant sap, they exude a sugary drop from their rear end. This sugary drop is called 'Honeydew'. Ants greedily feed on Honeydew. As we milk the cattle, ants also do that. They tickle hind parts of these insects and as a result honeydew is secreted.

Red ants tending Mealy bugs

Due to immobility of the pests and their continuous sapping plant juice, the branch on which they feed dies. If the branch dies, the pests would not get food. If pests do not get food, they would die. If the pests die, ants would not get honeydew. So ants always go on lifting the immature pests and deposit them in “Fresh Pastures”. This is called as symbiosis.

I was lucky to capture the sequence of this process. The ant in the photograph is a small black ant. Earlier I had a wonderful but simple digital camera. The camera could record many things, which would not be visible to human eye, without a magnifying lens. When I took series of these photographs, I could see only an ant and a few mealy bugs. Only after loading the snaps on my computer I could see the honeydew secreted by the mealy bug. In first shot, the ant is approaching a mealy bug, in the second shot the ant is tickling the mealy bug and in the third shot one can see the secreted honeydew.

1-Ant approaching Mealy bug; 2- Tickling it. 3- Extracted honeydew