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Late Night Musings

by Jo Rebeka on 07/16/11

A reader comments: Can ants even see color? Let's look that up. I don't know how anyone would know without asking the ants themselves, but mosquitoes are attracted to blue and killer bees to black, so who knows?

"According to Jurgen Ziesmann who cites Heinz Penzlin, and Gustav Fischer, ants can indeed see color. Apparently, ants have 4 different light absorbing pigments while humans only have 3. Scientists feel they can probably see UV light as a color, which is pretty interesting. They figure ants can see the different directions of polarization of light as different colors.
Most insects like bees and wasps cannot see red light, but ants can. It is likely ants can distinguish the colors, red, orange, and yellow.
The brain computes one image after gathering all of the information delivered from all sensory vision cells. No one has any difinitive answers as to how this is done in ants. Therefore it is impossible to tell what the image looks like to an ant."
(Jurgen Ziesmann, Post-doc Biology and Ecological Chemistry, U. Maryland Medical School)

Thanks for finding that info, very interesting!

Comments (2)

1. Candice said on 7/17/11 - 05:07AM

well it IS sunday after all, maybe they are down in the nest worshiping the frit gods on the day of rest, and have all the z-99 in the tabernacle because z-99 is the holy of holies ya know , lets hope they dont offer a blood sacrifice of the sugar ants to appease the gods as they beg for more Z-99

2. Susan Gibson said on 7/17/11 - 04:34PM

There are 4,600 kinds of ants on Earth. Ants make their homes almost everywhere, from the seashore to the mountains, from rotten logs to your kitchen. Ants can do amazing things. They can dig great catacombs of tunnels, some as deep as fifteen feet. They can pick up and carry objects that are many times their own weight. Ants can climb trees that are 100 feet (30,5 meters) high. They can move at a speed that compares to a person running 65 miles per hour (104 kph). The most interesting thing about ants is that they work together. Ants cannot survive alone. They have communities, just as we do. They work together to build their home, find food, take care of the queen and the young ants, and defend their home. Others need to be prodded. Ant colonies fight battles with other ant colonies. Their wars, like human wars, result in many dead and wounded.

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1.	Candice said on 7/17/11 - 05:07AM
	well it IS sunday after all, maybe they are down in the nest worshiping the frit gods on the day of rest, and have all the z-99 in the tabernacle because z-99 is the holy of holies ya know , lets hope they dont offer a blood sacrifice of the sugar ants to appease the gods as they beg for more Z-99
2.	Susan Gibson said on 7/17/11 - 04:34PM
	There are 4,600 kinds of ants on Earth. Ants make their homes almost everywhere, from the seashore to the mountains, from rotten logs to your kitchen. Ants can do amazing things. They can dig great catacombs of tunnels, some as deep as fifteen feet. They can pick up and carry objects that are many times their own weight. Ants can climb trees that are 100 feet (30,5 meters) high. They can move at a speed that compares to a person running 65 miles per hour (104 kph). The most interesting thing about ants is that they work together. Ants cannot survive alone. They have communities, just as we do. They work together to build their home, find food, take care of the queen and the young ants, and defend their home. Others need to be prodded. Ant colonies fight battles with other ant colonies. Their wars, like human wars, result in many dead and wounded.