Ant colony that killed itself?

[huekshitsume]

I had a massive fire ant colony in my apartment building, they looked exactly like solenopsis geminata but I don't think they were one cuz their stings did hurt but not that much. The colony was about 13 years old and had populated all the cracks in the building. One of their main nest was in my house. I have even seen the queen twice. The wierd thing is that I am a science student and we need to keep the salt samples we do with us. I have been collecting salt samples on my study table since 2 years which btw is just in the room besides the room that has the main nest entrance. A few weeks ago I got the sample of aluminium nitrate. Within an hour of me getting it to the home, ants attacked it. I tried to defend it and changed its place and dropping all the ants back on the table so they go back. In less than 10 minutes I discovered that ants had started attacking it even when I had kept it in almost opposite end of the house, in a room where there is no nest entrance (that I know of) this happened for quite a while. I even kept the sample in an airtight container. By the next day, the ants had chewed through the container and taken all the salt. Within hours, the colony vanished! At least 200,000-300,000 ants throughout all the nests died. I highly suspect this is due to the fact that most forms of aluminium are unfit for consumption. But if this is the case then why did they ate it. I have other aluminium salts and other nitrate salts and they never attacked them. Even wierd was that they all died after running out of the nest. If this happened in one nest I would suspect something was wrong inside the nest but it happened in every nest. I also studied it carefully, there were 24 nest in my approach and everywhere this happened. Further strengthening suspicion is the fact the according to my friends that live in the apartment building, this dramatic massacre started about 1-2 hours later in their house than in my house and my house was one of the first if not the first where this all started. Also there was only 5 grams of aluminium nitrate. Does anyone has any knowledge about this wierd behavior of ants? Also, since I have discovered some workers alive here and there but I can't tell if they are the same colony...

[Canadiananter]

Sometimes ants produce so many alarm pheromones that they start attacking everything they come into contact with even if it's their own colony member

[MCWren]

I had a massive fire ant colony in my apartment building, they looked exactly like solenopsis geminata but I don't think they were one cuz their stings did hurt but not that much. The colony was about 13 years old and had populated all the cracks in the building. One of their main nest was in my house. I have even seen the queen twice. The wierd thing is that I am a science student and we need to keep the salt samples we do with us. I have been collecting salt samples on my study table since 2 years which btw is just in the room besides the room that has the main nest entrance. A few weeks ago I got the sample of aluminium nitrate. Within an hour of me getting it to the home, ants attacked it. I tried to defend it and changed its place and dropping all the ants back on the table so they go back. In less than 10 minutes I discovered that ants had started attacking it even when I had kept it in almost opposite end of the house, in a room where there is no nest entrance (that I know of) this happened for quite a while. I even kept the sample in an airtight container. By the next day, the ants had chewed through the container and taken all the salt. Within hours, the colony vanished! At least 200,000-300,000 ants throughout all the nests died. I highly suspect this is due to the fact that most forms of aluminium are unfit for consumption. But if this is the case then why did they ate it. I have other aluminium salts and other nitrate salts and they never attacked them. Even wierd was that they all died after running out of the nest. If this happened in one nest I would suspect something was wrong inside the nest but it happened in every nest. I also studied it carefully, there were 24 nest in my approach and everywhere this happened. Further strengthening suspicion is the fact the according to my friends that live in the apartment building, this dramatic massacre started about 1-2 hours later in their house than in my house and my house was one of the first if not the first where this all started. Also there was only 5 grams of aluminium nitrate. Does anyone has any knowledge about this wierd behavior of ants? Also, since I have discovered some workers alive here and there but I can't tell if they are the same colony...

Weird. Maybe you discovered a new pest control agent! Sell your secrets to the exterminator!

[huekshitsume]

Sometimes ants produce so many alarm pheromones that they start attacking everything they come into contact with even if it's their own colony member

But I changed its place so many time and yet the ants started to consume it in minutes. And also, they were not attacking it. They seemed to rather peacefully consume it.

[huekshitsume]

I had a massive fire ant colony in my apartment building, they looked exactly like solenopsis geminata but I don't think they were one cuz their stings did hurt but not that much. The colony was about 13 years old and had populated all the cracks in the building. One of their main nest was in my house. I have even seen the queen twice. The wierd thing is that I am a science student and we need to keep the salt samples we do with us. I have been collecting salt samples on my study table since 2 years which btw is just in the room besides the room that has the main nest entrance. A few weeks ago I got the sample of aluminium nitrate. Within an hour of me getting it to the home, ants attacked it. I tried to defend it and changed its place and dropping all the ants back on the table so they go back. In less than 10 minutes I discovered that ants had started attacking it even when I had kept it in almost opposite end of the house, in a room where there is no nest entrance (that I know of) this happened for quite a while. I even kept the sample in an airtight container. By the next day, the ants had chewed through the container and taken all the salt. Within hours, the colony vanished! At least 200,000-300,000 ants throughout all the nests died. I highly suspect this is due to the fact that most forms of aluminium are unfit for consumption. But if this is the case then why did they ate it. I have other aluminium salts and other nitrate salts and they never attacked them. Even wierd was that they all died after running out of the nest. If this happened in one nest I would suspect something was wrong inside the nest but it happened in every nest. I also studied it carefully, there were 24 nest in my approach and everywhere this happened. Further strengthening suspicion is the fact the according to my friends that live in the apartment building, this dramatic massacre started about 1-2 hours later in their house than in my house and my house was one of the first if not the first where this all started. Also there was only 5 grams of aluminium nitrate. Does anyone has any knowledge about this wierd behavior of ants? Also, since I have discovered some workers alive here and there but I can't tell if they are the same colony...

Weird. Maybe you discovered a new pest control agent! Sell your secrets to the exterminator!

Well, if that's the case then ide rather not have my name on another weapon to massacre innocent bugs. You may take this one..

[Jharrell23867]

Inland ants that live in salt-poor area's have been documented going after salt even over sugar... Most ants can get salt from the food they eat normally tho as just about everything has some amount of sodium in it even bugs & fruits & just about every human item.

Weird. Maybe you discovered a new pest control agent! Sell your secrets to the exterminator!

This is no secret a lot of ant baits use poisonous salts mixed with sugar, not all but a few...

[AntsDakota]

But if this is the case then why did they ate it.

Ants will eat anything that smells good. They can't just look up aluminum nitrate and find out that it's poisonous. And why do ants eat liquid ant bait then? Because it smells delicious.