Ants do not drink blood. Their diet is diverse, but it does not include blood as a primary or typical food source. This article clarifies why the notion of ants drinking blood is inaccurate by exploring their actual dietary habits.
What Ants Actually Eat
Ants are omnivores, consuming both plant and animal matter. A significant portion of their diet consists of sugary liquids, which provide carbohydrates for energy. These sources include nectar, fruit juices, and honeydew, a sweet excretion produced by aphids that ants often “farm”. Worker ants primarily consume these carbohydrates to fuel their daily activities, such as foraging and colony maintenance.
Beyond sugary liquids, ants require proteins and fats for growth, development, and colony maintenance. These nutrients are obtained from sources like insects, insect eggs, seeds, fungi, and decaying organic matter. While adult worker ants mostly rely on liquid carbohydrates for energy, protein is crucial for the queen’s egg-laying and for developing larvae’s growth. Some ant species have specialized diets; for instance, harvester ants primarily collect seeds, while leafcutter ants cultivate and feed on a specific fungus grown on leaves they bring back to the nest.
How Ants Consume Food
Ants possess specialized mouthparts adapted for their varied diet. Their mandibles are used for grasping, cutting, and chewing solid food items, as well as for defense. Adult ants generally cannot ingest solid food directly due to the narrowness of their “waist” (petiole), which prevents solid particles from passing through to their abdomen. They process solid food by chewing it with their mandibles, then consuming the resulting liquids or carrying the pieces back to the nest.
Liquid food is imbibed using their labium (tongue) and stored in a specialized organ called the crop, also known as the “social stomach.” This social stomach allows worker ants to transport food back to the colony to share with other nestmates, including the queen and larvae, through trophallaxis. Trophallaxis involves the regurgitation and transfer of liquid food, ensuring nutrients are distributed throughout the colony. Larvae play a role in processing solid food; workers feed them particles, and the larvae digest these before regurgitating liquefied nutrients for adult ants.
Addressing the Misconception
The misconception that ants drink blood stems from observations of ants near wounds or dead animals. Ants are attracted to various bodily fluids, including those from wounds, because these fluids often contain valuable sugars, proteins, and salts. For example, ants are attracted to the sugar in urine. While ants might be observed near blood, they are not consuming the blood itself but rather other components or fluids present.
Ants are also proficient scavengers, feeding on carrion and decaying organic matter. This scavenging behavior means they consume nutrients from dead insects or animal remains, which can include fluids associated with internal tissues, but not specifically blood from live, healthy organisms.
Although “Dracula ants” (Adetomyrma species) engage in a unique behavior called “nondestructive cannibalism,” where adult workers make small incisions in their larvae to drink hemolymph (insect “blood”), this is an exception and not typical ant feeding behavior. Hemolymph is not vertebrate blood, and this specialized feeding method is distinct from the general diet of most ant species.