CATDOLL : CATDOLL: Habits of black ants

1. Habitat and Activities

In nature, black ants mainly live in forests with abundant water resources and high tree density, as well as in mixed woods, pine forests, bamboo forests, tea oil forests, and fruit forests near rivers. They are highly adaptable and are social insects that live in colonies. They often build nests on trees or underground and have a strong love for nests. They usually live in groups. A group of black ants consists of one or several female ants (queen ants) and many worker ants, soldier ants, and male ants. Black ants run quickly when they go out, and their routes of movement have a certain regularity. There is a clear division of labor among the various ants in their colonies. In addition to migration and nesting, female ants rarely go out, but they are the most fully developed and specialize in giving birth to and reproducing offspring; male ants are only responsible for mating with female ants and die shortly after mating; worker ants are responsible for building nests, finding food, and feeding young ants and female ants; soldier ants are mainly responsible for protecting the safety of the ant nest, guarding the entrance, and not allowing ants from other nests to enter the nest; once they find an intruder, they will kill each other in groups until the foreign ants who have entered the nest are bitten to death.

2. Diet

Black ants have a wide range of diets and are very good at distinguishing food. When looking for food, black ants can move and remove food that is dozens or even hundreds of times their own weight. Black ants have a large appetite. Under natural conditions, they often feed on small animals such as insects, spiders, centipedes, locusts, moth larvae, and rice, wheat, corn, millet, sorghum, and root and tuber crops. They will also move the above food back to the nest for storage. Under artificial breeding conditions, wheat bran, corn flour, peanut bran, bean cake, biscuits, leftovers, silkworms, mealworms, earthworms, meat scraps and bone meal of livestock and poultry, and fish meal can all be used as feed.