The AntsCanada Ant Forum's

Hey guys. So today,I saw a weird looking mushroom in my backyard. I noticed small holes on the top of it, so it took it into my garage and dissected it. It turns out that there was an entire colony of ants living inside of it! It even had some ant larvae. I took some of the ants out and placed them into a container to take a picture of them. It turns out that they couldn't even walk on a smooth surface without tripping! I decided to put them back on the mushroom, and the first thing they did was to cover themselves in as much dust (spores from the mushroom) as they could, and them climb back into the holes in the mushroom leading to the colony!
Have any of you guys ever come across something like this? I've never heard of it. Let me know what you guys think.

New2Ants wrote:Hey guys. So today,I saw a weird looking mushroom in my backyard. I noticed small holes on the top of it, so it took it into my garage and dissected it. It turns out that there was an entire colony of ants living inside of it! It even had some ant larvae. I took some of the ants out and placed them into a container to take a picture of them. It turns out that they couldn't even walk on a smooth surface without tripping! I decided to put them back on the mushroom, and the first thing they did was to cover themselves in as much dust (spores from the mushroom) as they could, and them climb back into the holes in the mushroom leading to the colony!
Have any of you guys ever come across something like this? I've never heard of it. Let me know what you guys think.

I've never heard something like this , very interesting. The only specie that live in fungi that I know of are Atta and Acromyrmex from South-America, but that obviously isn't the case here. Could you take a picture of the ants so we can identify it ?

I did take pictures of the ants and the mushroom. But for some reason, it's not letting me post them.

New2Ants wrote:I did take pictures of the ants and the mushroom. But for some reason, it's not letting me post them.

Take a look on how to post pictures.

http://forum.AntsCanada.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=162

Another example of how young this hobby is. Amazing!

i found a colony like this last year i think it was, playing disc golf. at the time i just thought they were eating it or something, now after reading this i realize they were maybe likely living in it for a bit. here is the photo.

Cool! The mushroom that I found them in is a puffball mushroom. The ants seem to inhabit the powder inside of the mushroom. Pretty cool if you ask me.

larynx wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 04, 2015 6:42 pm

i found a colony like this last year i think it was, playing disc golf. at the time i just thought they were eating it or something, now after reading this i realize they were maybe likely living in it for a bit. here is the photo.

To me those ants look like Ponera pennsylvanica, like my colony.

That odd moment when you realize this could be a new behavior of ants unknown to science

Yeah. I felt that way about my black Pheidole that I thought was Tetramorium. I'm hoping it's a new species. (they died, so I'm waiting to get more to test them.)