Frequently Asked Questions

Buy a few kid pools. You can find these almost anywhere. Place the pools in your backyard. Keep checking the pools and you will find lots of queens almost every day especially after a rain.

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While many types of animals can learn behaviors by imitating other animals, ants may be the only group of animals besides primates and some other mammals in which interactive teaching behavior has been observed. Knowledgeable forager ants of the species Temnothorax albipennis directly lead naïve nest-mates to newly discovered food sources by the excruciatingly slow (and time-costly) process of tandem running. The follower thereby obtains knowledge that it would not have, had it not been tutored, and this is at the expense of its nest-mate teacher. Both leader and follower are acutely sensitive to the progress of their partner. For example, the leader slows down when the follower lags too far behind, and speeds up when the follower gets too close, while the follower does the opposite.

Controlled experiments with colonies of Cerapachys biroi suggest that these ants can specialize based on their previous experience. An entire generation of identical workers was divided into two groups based on how the researchers controlled the outcome of food foraging. One group was continually rewarded with prey, while it was made certain that the other failed. As a result, members of the successful group intensified their foraging attempts while the unsuccessful group ventured out less and less. One month later, 'workers that previously found prey kept on exploring for food, whereas those who always failed specialized in brood care'.

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