As you know, I am the custodian at our church. Our church has a little ant problem. Sometimes while I am vacuuming the floors, I see ants and so I suck them up! But...as I suck them up a few questions come to mind:
- do ants have any last thoughts before they die?
- do the rest of the ants in the colony notice that there are some that don't come home at the end of the day?
- do you think they do a head count and see if every ant comes home at night?
- do they have funerals for each other, or just if they don't come back then oh well?
I'm sure that possibly ants don't have feelings like us, so they don't think like us. But these are just thoughts that come in my head as I suck up ants into the vacuum cleaner:)
4 comments:
Apparently they have no emotions, due to the simplicity of their brains nor do they feel pain like we do. However they do communicate with each other and the little boy down the street from us informed me that if an ant walks over a cut on your skin it will hurt because they secrete something from their abdomens.
That said, I prefer the idea of happy little ants that have families and picnics, perhaps a ball game here or there. It is so much more whimsical than the above paragraph.
Okay...to answer Buff - I'm not sure they have simplistic brains - ever sat and watch an ant colony? It's pretty organized! The "walking over the cut" thing totally grossed me out. Tanya and Tom have an ant problem and I'm trying to prevent us from having one. The little pests are always trying to scoot into the open door. We have an ant problem in our back yard - especially the patio area - and it drives me nuts. Even to the point of hunting online for ways of killing the wretches. The one that had the most endorsements was getting a guy to pee on the anthill but I can't talk my hubbie into doing it ;) I, too, often wonder if they are missed from the colony or if someone gives them a funeral... As for me, I kill everyone that crosses my path. Sorry, ants.
Ants don't like lemon, believe it or not and will not climb a wire or rope that has a slice of lemon on it (campers take note).
When we lived down south in a caravan for awhile we once had the worst ant-problem you could ever imagine -- just long black lines of them coming up the sides and through the windows.
Someone told me about the power of lemon and I tried it. Worked perfectly. It doesn't kill them, of course, just dissuades them completely of trespassing wherever they can smell the stuff -- which is exactly what I wanted.
Uncle D
Interesting on the lemon! I'll have to try that. Luckily we don't have an ant problem here - only every other bug!
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