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Meet the Lasius Ant
Before I met my husband, an electrical engineer, the only thing I
knew for sure that engineers did was drive trains. Sure, I knew
tons of people who said they were engineers of one kind or
another, but once I found out they weren’t wearing cool hats
conducting thousands of tons of steel hurtling at lightning speeds
down railroad tracks, my brain would glaze over and I’d lose
interest in their profession.
“You mean you have no giant horn to blare at passersby as you
cross over city streets and along the countryside? BO-ring!” I
used to think.
Then I met the man who would become my husband. As he
talked about his job, I learned that many different kinds of
engineers work to keep our world safe and running smoothly. Civil
engineers, for example, prevent tragedy by designing safe roads,
buildings, and bridges. Electrical engineers plan the circulatory
system of wires and currents coursing
through our cities. Aerospace engineers
launch us into the sky and even outer
Urban Life
Where it lives: Many Lasius ants prefer open
spaces, and will set up their anthills in grassy
areas like golf courses or traffic medians.
Sometimes they nest under stones or in logs.
What it eats: Aphid experts, Lasius ants tend
aphids like cattle, milking them for honeydew
and sometimes killing them for a big aphid
steak.
NYC notes: Lasius neoniger loves the
medians, where it thrives, though just what it is
doing there needs to be studied. Lasius
alienus can be found anywhere it finds a patch
of open ground, where it makes a nest in the
ground in which the inside of its tunnels are
arranged so that the smooth sides of the
stones all point toward the inside, to make
smooth-bricked walkways for tender, tiny feet.
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