Where are leafcutter ants going with those leaf pieces? They are walking up to 250 meters from trees to their nests (which can grow to over 30 meters and contain eight million ants!). Leafcutter ants can carry almost 10 times their own weight!
Once the leaf pieces get to the nest, ants chew the plant material down to a pulp. This is placed into a growing fungus culture (along with fecal matter), which breaks down the proteins in the leaves. The ants eat a part of the fungus matter, called the gongylidia. The fungus garden must constantly be fed with new plant matter, which is why leafcutter ants are always working.
Here are some other fun facts about leafcutter ants:
Leafcutters consume up to 20% of all the plant material in their areas, but they rotate trees to make sure that they aren’t killed.
The fungus garden of a new colony is started by the queen. She stores bits of parental fungus in her mouth!
The jaws of leafcutter ants vibrate a thousand times a second to slice off pieces of leaf.
To find their way back to the nest, the ants release pheromones and then follow the scent.
Leafcutter ants consume 20% of the annual vegetation growth in the rainforest.
When building the nest, worker ants move up to 40 tons of soil.
A recent Water & Wave student filmed this video of leafcutter ants in action:
Where are leafcutter ants going with those leaf pieces? They are walking up to 250 meters from trees to their nests (which can grow to over 30 meters and contain eight million ants!). Leafcutter ants can carry almost 10 times their own weight!
