Panama – Leafcutter Ants

It’s always fun when you, as a tourist, find something so mundane to people from the country you are visiting utterly fascinating.  I have wondered if there is anywhere in the world there aren’t pigeons when I see people interacting with the giant flying poop creators in Trafalgar Square and such.  How can these people find pigeons exciting?

In Panama, I was enamored with the leaf cutting ants, which, to the locals, are super boring and everywhere (although less poop laden than their pidgeon counterparts).  But that’s what’s fun about travel, seeing what’s new to you.  And leaf-cutter ants were new to me and I admired their industry and their farming skills.

I carefully avoided trampling their well-worn paths as I walked through the park after the guide, who clearly had no such compunction. Just as I ignore the pidgeons that scatter as I walk down city streets.

Yes, the ants wear actual paths in the ground going to and from the tree or bush from which they are carefully removing crescents of a leaf.  They collect the leaves in their tunnels, chew them up, poop on them and let fungus grow on them that they eat. Yes, really.  I also saw them taking flower petals.  They mike nice little lines that go back and forth from the nest to the leaf source. Unladen ants this way, and ants bearing leaf bits going that way.

If you want to learn more about these really cool critters, this is a good book by great authors, with a ton of info and good pictures explaining the lives of the fun-to-watch leafcutter ants.

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Happy travels!