Experiment Project

Section A:

There always seems to be ants crawling all over your food as soon as you leave it out, but can they actually eat all your food? Will they even have made a dent, after a whole day, in this case a raspberry? This experiment will test that. It will answer the question, how long would it take for ants to eat one piece of fruit? The results should tell us if one small piece of fruit can even be eaten by a few ants in under a week, or if you would need a whole colony to finish it.

Ants are generally listed as herbivores. They scavenge for food, typically similar foods as us humans. They will usually eat any of over leftovers and crumbs. Fruit and vegetables are most common in their diet, as they need about a 30% protein intake. They tear their food into smaller pieces, so it is easier to transport to their nest. Other than eating our foods, ants will eat leaves, and other things they find in the nature. Some species will even eat different fungi. Ants living in the wild, of course will not have access to our crumbs, so they feed entirely on other insects, sometimes even bugs larger than themselves, for example centipedes. They will also eat plants and honey from trees. Once the ants have found food to eat and/ or bring back to their nest, they first call for help from other ants from the same colony. If the food they have found is too big to carry, they start to bury it underground. We are not quite sure why they do this, but a guess is that it is easier for them to climb around the food when it is no longer smooth or wet, for example if they were dealing with a worm. Ants have a social stomach which they fill to capacity with the food, go back to their nest and then feed it to other ants in the colony, mouth to mouth. They do this because if they bring larger pieces of food to the nest, and it isn’t eaten right a way, it may stay there for too long, forming harmful bacteria or fungi. Cleanliness is very important for ant nests, as they are living in small enclosed spaces, with many members of the colony close together. The mouth to mouth feeding process means the food stays safe to eat. Ants do not eat much food; they eat about one pound every year. One super worm can feed an entire colony of ants, taking just a few hours. The ants leave small pieces of the food leftovers outside of the nest, which tells other insects that their food has been fully consumed. That way, other bugs don’t try to look for the ant’s food. This process of locating, burying, tearing, distribution, and execution has worked for these ants for millions and millions of years. Though ants eat similarly to us humans, they digest their food very differently. Adult ants cannot break down solid foods, it must be turned into a liquid before digestion. Specific digestive liquids dissolve the solids. Once swallowed, the now liquid food is filtered in a chamber. It is compressed so that it can be sat by the ant. A part of the ant called the Gaster, holds most of digestive system. It is made of a soft tissue, wrapped in rings, which act like rubber bands holding everything together. The crop holds the food until it is ready to completely absorb it. Once the It can then leave the crop and slowly goes down into the midgut (also in the Gaster). The nutrients from the food is absorbed and the waste is pushed out through an opening in the end of the Gaster, and out of the ant.

From this information we can predict the outcome of our future experiment; If one ant can eat 1.2 grams of food a day, and a small piece of fruit such as a strawberry is about 12 grams, then it would take about 12 ants to eat a strawberry in one day. We are able to make this prediction because we know that an ant can eat about a pound of food a year. 1 pound divided by 365 days is around 1.2 grams of food a day. If this experiment is happening over a timespan of one week, then to figure out how many grams an ant can eat in one week, you would do 1 pound divided by 52 weeks (52 weeks in a year), and finally get the answer 8.4 grams. That means that one ant can eat about 8.4 grams during this one-week experiment.

Section B:

To find the answer to our question; how long would it take for ants to eat one piece of fruit, we will conduct an experiment where we will be able to see ants eating fruit. The first step to this experiment is to find a container to collect the ants in, making sure that it is not any higher than 4 or 5 inches or they will not be able to climb inside. You will then need to get some sort of bait to lure them in the container. Using a piece of fruit or peanut butter attracts them best. If you are using peanut butter, you must be careful not to put too much inside, or the ants will get stuck in it, as it is sticky. Next, set the container outside, it is best if it is near an ant hole, as it will attract more ants. Let it sit for a couple hours so that ants have time to find their way to the container. Don’t wait too long, or the ants will crawl back out. Once you’ve collected the ants, take out any leftover bait and place the fruit you are experimenting with inside. Make sure you have a lid on the container so they ants cannot crawl out, and poke a hole in the lid, that way, the ants have air and will not die. In this case, I used clear plastic wrap to cover the container, as I didn’t want to make holes in it. I then used a rubber band to keep in secure and poked a hole in the plastic wrap with a toothpick. Give the ants a few days to eat the fruit, but remember to keep an eye on them, to see the progress, and catch when the fruit is fully consumed.

To conduct this experiment, you will only need a few materials. That includes a jar or container, to hold the ants, a rubber band and a sheet of plastic wrap to act as a lid, a toothpick to pock the air hole, some fruit and/ or peanut butter as bait and , and for the ants to eat, and lastly ants. To record the data from the experiment, we will use a digital chart or graph.

While collecting ants, there is a possibility that they could bite you, however it should not hurt. Depending on where you put the container to collect the ants, for instance, when I did this experiment the ant whole was by my driveway, so in that case I’d have to be careful about cars. Another concern is that I used a glass jar to collect the ants, so if the jar were to break, you could get cut. You also need to be cautious with what bait you are using, for example I used peanut butter, however some people are allergic to that.

There are of course risks of hurting the ants while conducting this experiment and as we have not yet preformed the experiment, I will try my best not to hurt the ants. However, some of them may die while they are in the container. The ants that do survive, hopefully most of them, I will release back outside where I found them. Ohers may also have concerns about getting sick, so I will address that as well. Ants will not make you sick unless you are allergic to them. Some people are allergic to certain species of ants however, the ants you’ll find here in this experiment or out in your yard, are most likely completely harmless.

Section C:

Section D:

From looking at our collected data, we can see that there is not much of a pattern in our results, however, if you look closely at the numbers you can see how much food the ants usually eat everyday. The most reoccurring number in the graph is 0.04, meaning that the average amount of food eaten by the number of ants that I had collected was about 0.04g per day. You can also see that the amount of food eaten was slowly decreasing. This is because the number of living ants was also dropping and without the same number of ants throughout the whole experiment, we of course got varying results. In our first attempt of this experiment (in yellow), you can clearly see that the ants did not eat anything, as they all died overnight. The second attempt at the experiment went much better however, the ants did not eat much food over the two and a half weeks I had them encaged. Now taking a look at the other second graph showing the survival rate of the ants you can see that there is more of a distinguishable pattern. The green line is showing the first attempt of this experiment, where it distinctively states that all 50 ants unfortunately died on the first day. The orange lines represent the second attempt of our experiment. These lines have a clear pattern which you can see just by looking at the graph, not the numbers. The ants usually died every other day in groups of five. So, five ants would die one day, and zero ants died the next and so on, until the end of the experiment less ants were dying, probably because there weren’t many left to die.

In the first graph on the ant’s consumption of food, nothing really stuck out to us. The results were not specially in a pattern possibly because ants digest food quite slowly to they may not be as hungry right the next day after eating the day earlier. The second graph on the survival rate is were more things drew our attention, one of those being why the same number of ants were dying every second day. Our group wasn’t sure of why the ants were dying in this pattern however, we believe that some reasons that the ants generally died so quickly was because they didn’t have a whole colony. There was no queen and all the ants looked relatively small, which led us to thinking that they were quite young, not bale to survive on their own. The habitat was also not what there were used to, either being too small, not having good air circulation, not getting enough sunlight, too much movement of the box, not enough soil, the food we were giving them wasn’t quite what they were used to, they didn’t get enough water, or they got too much, drowning them in the water. The other thing that stood out to me in the survival rate graph was of course that the first attempt line is all the way at 50 dead ants. This is because we were not sure on how to keep the ants alive. They were in a glass jar with a hole in the lid and were barely given any soil in the jar, which of course is not their usual habitat. We also didn’t think of giving them water and left them outside in the cold. Of course, ants always live outside however, because they didn’t get any soil in the jar, they have nothing to keep each other warm. This may also explain why they were all bunched up when I found them dead the next morning. It is possible that they were trying to stay warm throughout the night. Others than those few things everything seemed either expected or we had a prediction of why something was happening.