Happy 2022! Winter is one of my favourite seasons out in the natural world. The deciduous trees have lost their leaves making it easier to spot birds, the stories of animals are revealed in the tracks they leave behind, and you can hear better. The one downside to winter is that one of Alberta’s strongest creatures is nowhere to be found. But they are here; hidden in their beautifully carved homes are the mighty Carpenter Ants.
These tiny creatures, who can grow up to 25 mm, are one of the biggest ant species we have in Canada and have some crazy abilities. They can lift objects 50 times their own weight and march up to 100 m away from their colony (that is what you call your family home if you’re an ant). If a kid who was 1.5 meters tall was able to do the same you would walk 75 km away from your house for groceries, bite onto the bumper of a car and use your mouth to carry and drag it back home.
As much as I love their strength, the reason I wanted to focus on Carpenter Ants was to answer the question how do Carpenter Ants survive the winter. They appear in spring after the frigid cold temperatures and layers of snow and ice disappear as though nothing much happened. There are a few reasons for this.
One is that Carpenter Ants migrate. Often people believe that migration means traveling south, but it just means to go somewhere based on the season. Carpenter Ants normally live throughout trees in tunnels they carefully made by removing bits of wood from the tree and placing them outside. Come winter it is far too cold to be hanging out at the tops of trees. Can you imagine sitting in tree branches during a blizzard? Brrr. The ants perform what is known as an altitudinal migration. This means you travel downwards to find someplace warmer, just like those fluffy white mountain goats in the Rockies travelling to lower areas on the mountains. The ants head down to the base of the tree where there is less cold wind and a thicker trunk to protect them from the cold. I guess we could call them “migr-Ants”.
The second thing the carpenter ants do is by far the coolest. The ants seal off the entrance, because your parents are right, leaving a door open does let in drafts. Next, they all huddle together in the base of the tree with the queen in the middle keeping one another warm. The ants start producing something in their ant blood called glycerol, a natural antifreeze. This “Ant-ifreeze” stops ice from forming inside of the ant’s body when the temperatures drop below zero. By doing this they can stay alive but inactive where other animals would freeze to death. Amazing!
If you want to find evidence of carpenter ants in your own backyard look in older dead or dying trees for their tunnel systems pictured here, especially if you see woodpecker holes. And always remember to be gentle with anything we find in nature.
By: Laura Griffin
