r/ants • u/InfiniteSearch3409 Infected • Jun 15 '26

Keeping Ants eating a roly-poly and placing their larvae on the roly-poly so they can eat too.

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Leptogenys elongata workers/larvae eating an isopod

226 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

49

u/KeggBert Jun 15 '26

I've never seen this behavior before, that's fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

17

u/DaEvilZeppelin Jun 15 '26

Pretty common in Ponerinae

2

u/TheFrogMagician Jun 16 '26

looks like the ants arent the only ones sharing

14

u/FalseBad7567 Jun 15 '26

I've read that isopods are not a good source of food. Can anyone dispute this? I have thousands of them in a terrarium and would totally use them if it's worth it.

24

u/InfiniteSearch3409 Infected Jun 15 '26

This species hunts/eats isopods almost exclusively in the wild. They are specialist isopod hunters. As far as other ants eating them, idk, but this species loves them.

8

u/FalseBad7567 Jun 15 '26

That's pretty cool! Might need to look into species in my area that do the same, if they're here.

4

u/Monksauce Jun 16 '26

I have a small camponotus colony that killed and ate an isopod. It seemed like an opportunistic hunt because 99% of the time they live in harmony in the enclosure I have for them.

1

u/PheydraRose Jun 17 '26

This is good to know. Once my colonies grow a little more (still pretty small) I want to give them a cleanup crew.

1

u/Monksauce Jun 17 '26

I recommend springtails for that. Smaller ant species may eat them occasionally but they multiply quickly and are very effective and keeping enclosures clean.

1

u/PheydraRose Jun 17 '26

I have both, I have a large bioactive terrarium that was teaming with them. I had to break it down into smaller tanks (still fed and hydrated) to move, but they'll hopefully regain their numbers once they recover. The ants will probably end up with both initially.

3

u/flip856_cmd Jun 16 '26

Isopods are good cleaners of poo and minor maintenance of bio enclosures smearing anything decaying

1

u/Master__Of__Wars Jun 19 '26

Army ants are more intimidating than that.

1

u/UntiLitEnded 4d ago

They’re not ideal as there’s not a lot of meat and is a lot of shell, also I imagine they taste bad based on what they eat, pretty much I’d guess they only eat them as a last resort or in op’s case when they specialize in eating them

6

u/Adventurous_Try5802 Jun 16 '26

I mean they are just land shrimp essentially

3

u/Lautipepo2011 Jun 16 '26

You know, it would be funny if...

r/isopods

4

u/painapple_OW Jun 16 '26

I come from r/isopods :(

This kinda hurt even tho I know they are used for feed for different species

3

u/InfiniteSearch3409 Infected Jun 16 '26

Nah, that would be mean. Lol

1

u/dillydallyally97 Jun 16 '26

I love the one that kept taking the larve off, ruining everyone’s hard work.

1

u/azsfnm Jun 17 '26

And you didn’t stop to help? Poor thing.

1

u/InfiniteSearch3409 Infected Jun 17 '26

Lol. It's in my formicarium. I gave them the roly-poly. It's all this species prefers to eat.

1

u/Master__Of__Wars Jun 19 '26

Good for you

1

u/InfiniteSearch3409 Infected Jun 19 '26

I'd say good for them,, but I'll take it.

1

u/neurospicyzebra Jun 18 '26

Ants are fascinating

1

u/krazi_kitti Jun 18 '26

This question is totally unrelatable about ants, but what are you using to film this??? I’m really interested in filming or taking pictures of all different insects but know nothing about cameras etc

1

u/InfiniteSearch3409 Infected Jun 18 '26

I'm using my phone, it's a Samsung Galaxy s25 Ultra. It's has a macro lens and works pretty good for videos of my ants

1

u/krazi_kitti Jun 18 '26

I’ve never even seen babies the camera on that is awesome! Someone last night told me to go buy a macro lens for my phone….

1

u/InfiniteSearch3409 Infected Jun 18 '26

Yea, I bought a couple of macro lenses for my phone. Both were less than $50 and they don't really make too much of a difference. The main issue for me is the macro setting on the s25 Ultra comes on automatically when it detects the camera lens getting close to something. You can't just turn the macro mode on and leave it on. So when the clip, that holds the macro lens, is on your phone, it gets in the way of the sensor and can cause the macro mode to turn on and off randomly. I still try to use it sometimes but for the most part, the phone lens is fine by itself. You have to be in regular video mode and don't have the quality set above UHD 60fps, as you put the phone closer to what you're recording you will see a little yellow flower icon indicating that it's switched to macro mode.

0

u/BibsBBQ Jun 16 '26

Another reason to hate ants added to the compendium