Plausible reason for gold-digging ant
Medieval bestiaries describe a creature, a type of desert-dwelling ant that digs for gold. It was also said to be the size of a fox, but I'll ignore that in this question.
Why would ants unearth pieces of gold? What evolutionary purpose would this behavior serve?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/139922. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
1 answer
Why would ants unearth pieces of gold? What evolutionary purpose would this behavior serve?
It makes their chimneys work better.
The workers gather the gold and bring it to the colony. The soldiers use their large powerfull mandibles to shape the soft gold into roughly flat flakes which they distribute around the nest site.
The gold's reflection of the sun's light and heat in an upwards direction has two effects:
- It heats the chimneys, encouraging convection and allowing air circulation around the ant's farmed food source - the fungus below.
Attribution BBC 2019
- It reflects the heat off the surrounding ground, allowing it to be cool - enabling the underground tunnels used for farming the food fungus to expand and grow and thus the colony to be bigger and more succesfull.
Attribution: Darwin's Toolkit by UW"“Madison CALS 2019
0 comment threads
0 comment threads