Honeypot Ants Turn Their Biggest Sisters into Jugs of Nectar | Deep Look

Deep in their underground nests, honeypot ants stuff members of their own colony until they look like golden water balloons. Drop by drop, worker ants deliver nectar and other liquid food into their largest sisters’ mouths. When food is scarce in the desert, the colony will feed from these living storage tanks, known as repletes. Hey Deep Peeps! If you love Ants, here is our I LOVE ANTS PLAYLIST: DEEP LOOK is a ultra-HD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small. --- How do honeypot ant workers turn their sisters into repletes? First, they choose the biggest newborns. Then they need food to fill them up. The species of honeypot ant featured in our video, Myrmecocystus mexicanus, forages at night in the Southwest and Mexico. Workers venture out of their nest at d