More leaf-cutter ants

2 March 2009

The wind is in full blow today. The rain — hard last night and through the morning — let up in the afternoon. (This evening, though, it has resumed.)

I walked to a pig farm in Monteverde. The feed for these animals is a waste product from the cheese factory (the whey?). From there, I walked down a steep (!) path that is somewhat (but not entirely) sheltered from the wind and rain and on the dry west-facing slope that falls off steeply toward the lowlands. Crossing the path is a very active colony of leaf-cutter ants, and they were busy at work. It was amazing to watch them in the wind! Their cargo would sometimes act like sails and they would be blown over by a gust! There were several separate streams of ants which all seemed to be working for one large colony. One stream had an entry about six feet up a vertical cut on the uphill side of the path. It looked like they were climbing El Capitan! And they were carrying up their leave clippings like it was nothing special.

Among all the leaf cutter ants we’ve seen (and they are one of the few interesting fauna that has been a common spectacle), this colony has been the easiest to photograph because in the afternoon they are operating in serious sunlight. Other colonies we’ve seen are mainly in the shade and the ants move quickly so that it is hard to capture them up close. I shot these photos today and cropped them to get the extra close effect. Their quality depends strongly on the good lighting conditions.



I heard an amazing and sad story, secondhand (from Ingrid and Daniela). Sabine (our landlady) raises horses. When she first began here, her first colt was only several days old when it accidentally fell into a colony of leaf cutter ants and suffocated. The colt’s weight on its slender legs apparently was enough to penetrate through the ground surface to the core of the colony.