Although it’s no fun watching ants trail across the kitchen counter or through a picnic, observing their behavior outdoors can teach a child a lot about these six-legged animals.
Researching Nature with Children
Because ants are small and usually aren’t flying in peoples’ faces, children find them fascinating to watch. (Ants will have wings so they can inhabit new locations, away from their queen’s colony. Once they have selected a new habitat, they bite off their wings.)
With thousands of different ant species, each with different diet requirements, the response to this experiment applies only to the ants that appear at the test site. Still, it can be interesting to see how those ants respond when offered a buffet of food options.
Conduct a Test to Predict Ants’ Favorite Foods
Whether ants are out in the wild or inside a house, they are most often scouting for food. Avoid doing this experiment inside, or near, a house.
Look around for an active anthill. This way a child doesn’t have to wait long for ants to find the food set out for them. Set food approximately one foot from the anthill. Another option is to set out duplicate piles of food, one a foot from the ant colony, another two feet, and perhaps a third three feet from the opening to the hill.
Set samples of food on the type of bottle caps found on plastic milk jugs. Other alternatives include setting the food on similar size plastic lids or squares of white paper. By placing the food on top of something, children will have an easier time setting out equal amounts of different types of food, and have a simpler time seeing what food has been carried away.
Crumble a potato chip, cracker, or salty snack. Crush a cookie. Chop up bits of a fruit. Cut up small pieces of a vegetable. Then, leave out some plain salt, plain sugar, and, if available, a bit of an artificial sweetener. Add samples of other foods the ants may be interested.
Set out the buffet in a half circle a foot from the anthill. Have the children predict which foods will be the most popular with the ants. What will they eat first? What will the ants leave last?
Observing Ant Behavior
Check the food samples every hour. Is there a point when only a few ants are investigating the food, followed by a time when a line of ants is moving to and from the food?
If the child gets a chance to see a trail of ants moving between the anthill and the food, gently wipe a finger over the ground, across the trail, and watch the results. Ants leave scent trails of pheromones with their feet that the ants behind them follow.
Erase the scent and the ants will act disoriented for a moment before they get their bearings and rejoin the ants ahead of them. Their antennae move because a certain segments of these appendages detect scents.
Instead of wiping away the trail, place a small twig across the trail and watch the results.
Children can explore their curiosity about the natural world by observing the small world of the ants that live in their backyard. This simple experiment exploring ants’ dietary choices is easy for children to set up and observe the results.
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