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Sometimes their partiality for pudgy little insects lands field ants
in unusual situations. Many baby beetles (often called grubs) fit
the mold for a perfect field ant meal. Slow, soft, and chubby,
beetle grubs don’t stand a chance when hungry field ants
stumble across them while foraging. To ward off potential beetle
slayers, many beetle species, like tortoise beetles, found an
inventive solution: poop shields.
Here’s how it works: Some plants in our forests and across our
cities have certain “stop eating me!” chemicals in their leaves,
called deterrents. When most insects bite into a leaf and smell the
deterrents, they get as far away as possible. Not our resourceful
beetle grubs. They eat as much of these stinky leaves as they
can, pooping stinky leaf poop all over the place. Then they gather
up the poop and stick it on their bodies, making a force field of
stink that follows them wherever they go. Field ants catching a
whiff of these otherwise tasty tidbits run in the opposite direction
of our little Pigpens. If you feed these baby beetles non-stinky
plants, they still make a poop force field, but because they have
no deterrents to protect them, field ants will ignore the BM
blanket and eat them right on up.
Photo Gallery - What to eat in the city?
A Formica pallidefulva forages for nectar on a dandelion in the park. - ©
Alex Wild
Slaving Away
It may seem like all fun and games for field ants, frolicking across
our forests, lawns, and traffic medians, grocery shopping and
building their houses. But field ants have a wicked foe prowling
those same forests, lawns and traffic medians, combing the grass
for field ant nests: Amazon ants. Amazon ants look a lot like field
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