Behavior
A typical fire ant colony produces large mounds in open areas, and feeds mostly on young plants, seeds, and sometimes crickets. Fire ants often attack small animals and can kill them. Unlike many other ants, which bite and then spray acid on the wound, fire ants bite only to get a grip and then sting (from the abdomen) and inject a toxic alkaloid venom called solenopsin, a compound from the class of piperidines. For humans, this is a painful sting, a sensation similar to what one feels when burned by fire—hence the name fire ant—and the after effects of the sting can be deadly to sensitive individuals. The venom is both insecticidal and antibiotic.
Fire ants nest in the soil, often near moist areas, such as river banks, pond shores, watered lawns and highway shoulder. Usually, the nest will not be visible, as it will be built under objects such as timber, logs, rocks, or bricks. If there is no cover for nesting, dome-shaped mounds will be constructed, but these are usually only found in open spaces, such as fields, parks and lawns. These mounds can reach heights of 40 cm (15.7 in), and can also be as deep as a metre and a half (five feet). Colonies are founded by small groups of queens or single queens. Even if only one queen survives, within a month or so, the colony can expand to thousands of individuals. Some colonies may be polygynous (having multiple queens per nest).
Read more about this topic: Fire Ant
Famous quotes containing the word behavior:
“... two men could be just alike in all their dispositions to verbal behavior under all possible sensory stimulations, and yet the meanings or ideas expressed in their identically triggered and identically sounding utterances could diverge radically, for the two men, in a wide range of cases.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Children, randomly at first, hit upon something sooner or later that is their mother’s and/or father’s Achilles’ heel, a kind of behavior that especially upsets, offends, irritates or embarrasses them. One parent dislikes name-calling, another teasing...another bathroom jokes. For the parents, this behavior my have ties back to their childhood, many have been something not allowed, forbidden, and when it appears in the child, it causes high-voltage reaction in the parent.”
—Ellen Galinsky (20th century)
“Excessive attention, even if it’s negative, is such a powerful “reward” to a child that it actually reinforces the undesirable behavior. You need to learn restraint, to respond to far fewer situations, to ask yourself questions like, “Is this really important?” “Could I let this behavior go?” “What would happen if I just wait?” “Could I lose by doing nothing?””
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)