WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY: Harvester Ants
WILDLIFE WEDNESDAY: Harvester Ants
Looking like tiny space aliens, California harvester ants play an important role in our ecology
This weekend, duped by the previous days’ cooler temperatures, a group of us slogged up a 7.5-mile section of the California Riding and Hiking Trail. We lingered in the scraggly shade of a creosote drinking water and eating salty snacks—until Jo began to scrabble at her pant legs. “Ants in my pants!” she laughed and ran behind a yucca to shake out the ants in privacy.
“Ow! They’re biting!” We helpfully offered all the Benadryl cream we could find in our first aid kits, and the ointment seemed to help.
Jo had been swarmed by California harvester ants, which have a potent venom they deliver by biting with their powerful mandibles and then following up with a sting from their abdomen. I know from witlessly hanging laundry on a clothesline over ant nests that the stings are quite painful and itch for days. Have I moved the clothesline? No, I haven’t. Some of us never learn.
Despite the risk of bites/stings, it’s fascinating to watch harvester ants. It’s irresistible to touch the velvety chaff the worker ants pile up outside of their nests, husks and stems discarded from the seeds the ants gather.
It’s hard to make an individual connection with ants, but it’s possible to admire the efforts of worker ants as they collect the seeds they store in chambers several yards below the surface. Large colonies might have tens of thousands of workers that range hundreds of feet outside of their nests. It’s easy to see how important they are in the ecosystem because they disperse seeds, loosen sand and dirt so water seeps in deeper, and mix nutrients from the plants they gather into the soil.
Harvester ants forage even during the hottest months, and run around frantically with their gasters (the bulbous part at the end of an ant) held high to keep them off the ground. They slow down in temperatures below 65 degrees but might emerge on warmer winter days.
Many animals find harvester ants tasty—have you ever run across a horned lizard perched at the edge of an anthill hoovering up ants? Ants make up 90 percent of the lizards’ diet—they can flick the toxic ants into their mouths and swallow them before they can get stung.
Harvesters ants have a place in California Native rituals, according to the late Cecelia Garcia, a Chumash elder and healer. She described how boys were given hundreds of harvester ants to swallow as part of a coming of age ritual. The youth show their character as they endure the pain and may experience visions from the ant toxins.1
Fortunately, harvester ants prefer to be outside, and we don’t have to worry that they’ll invade our kitchens and bathrooms looking for water, as Argentine ants do in more urban areas. Harvester ants have evolved perfectly to do their work in our hot and dry climate and despite our experience on the trail, don’t bother us unless we carelessly step on their nests.
In a National Institutes of Health report on Chumash healing practices, an author drily noted, “Fortunately, the abuse of ants as hallucinogens is minimal in our present society.”
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