Sunday 15 July 2012: green ants

Walking back from lunch at the ARC (though this part of the world is seeming more and more Ark like this is actually the Alyangula Recreation Club) spotted this clumpy packet of leaves in a candelnut tree.

Green ants build these nests by joining the leaves together with a silky, sticky liquid produced by squeezing their larvae which the worker ants bring from an already established nest.Not much fun for the poor old larvae mind you!
Great team workers, if one ant can't reach the next leaf required in the nest making, other ants form a chain to slowly pull it in.
Completed, these nests may be up to 50cm in length and several individual nests will make up a colony's home.

Also known as sugar and honey ants, they have a little green bulbous 'bottom' containing a sugary oil that is used by Aborginals as a sweetener and medicinally, and in a 'beeless' environment these ants are the fruit flower pollinators.

Talk about multi taskers.

• DMC-TZ20:
• f/3.3:
• 1/60":
• 4.3mm:
• ISO 200

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