Ants in zoos

FelipeDBKO

FelipeDBKO

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
I just discovered this channel called AntsCanada and realized that ant-keeping is a lot more complex than I thought. I didn't know that red imported fire ants would just show their living raft behavior if you kept then in an amazonian biotope paludarium, or that it was not just ok but in fact actually good to mix ant colonies with predators like archerfishes and pitcher plants. There's so much more than leafcutters ants out there. Is the cause of it always being leafcutter ants and pretty much never (from what I've "not" seem, at least) red imported fire ants, bullet ants, yellow crazy ants or dracula ants in zoos simply the visitor indifference?

Which zoos have decent ant collections or, at least, individual intriguing species or enclosures? What about termites?
 
FelipeDBKO said:
I just discovered this channel called AntsCanada and realized that ant-keeping is a lot more complex than I thought. I didn't know that red imported fire ants would just show their living raft behavior if you kept then in an amazonian biotope paludarium, or that it was not just ok but in fact actually good to mix ant colonies with predators like archerfishes and pitcher plants. There's so much more than leafcutters ants out there. Is the cause of it always being leafcutter ants and pretty much never (from what I've "not" seem, at least) red imported fire ants, bullet ants, yellow crazy ants or dracula ants in zoos simply the visitor indifference?

Which zoos have decent ant collections or, at least, individual intriguing species or enclosures? What about termites?
Click to expand...

Not really a zoo, but the Liberty Science Center has an interesting ant display similar to a few of AntsCanada's terrariums.
 
Plzen Zoo has a number of ant species kept in it's rhino house. I can't remember off hand which species, I'd have to check my notes.
 
When I was in Kindergarten, the class was doing an art project where we had to draw a picture of an animal, then glue yarn in front of it, so it looked like the animal was in a cage. Then we hung them all up on the wall as a class "zoo". After much consideration, I decided to choose leafcutter ants as my animal (as only a ZooChatter in the making would). I got made fun of by the other kids because 'ants aren't a zoo animal'.

UW Madison had a day a few years back where they let regular people see some of their usually not visible science stuff, including the coolest leafcutter ant display I have seen.

The famous Field Museum in Chicago once had an exhibit on ants with live ants (I think California Harvester). Unfortunately, this exhibit has been replaced with one about (sigh) beer.
 
Cincinnati has two exhibits for Texas Bullet Ants and Leafcutter Ants. Both are amazing and really interactive and educational, though I like the Leafcutter exhibit more.
 
Does the Central Park Zoo still have an ant exhibit in its Tropic Zone building? I read about it in David Grazian's book American Zoo: A Sociological Safari, describing how dismissive visitors were about the display (with one person even saying, "Why would anyone want to look at ants in a zoo?").
 
Zoo Berlin keeps (or kept) green tree ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) and Asian carpenter ants (Crematogaster rogenhoferi) at the upper floor of the Aquarium, next to leaf cutter ants.
 
Formicaria have been quite popular for a while now in Germany and Austria, thanks to commercial providers such as Antstore. Among various species of leafcutter ants, over the years I've seen, next to the Berlin species AWP mentioned, Cataglyphis ants at the Desert House in Schönnbrunn, Vienna, Paraponera clavata at the Shedd Aquarium & at Cincinnati Zoo, honeypot ants at Cincinnati Zoo and Myrmecia pavida at Tierpark Hellabrunn, Munich. They make up for some very impressive exhibits, but unfortunately, once the colony overages and the queen dies, most zoos / aquaria stop keeping them.
 
London Zoo used to have a nest of red wood ants (Formica rufa) in the old Insect House: this species is native to the UK. The current B.U.G.S house houses leaf-cutters.
 
The Insect House in Artis is not a place I go to at every visit, so I'm not sure about the current collection, but European red wood ants (Formica polyctena) and a rarer species of leafcutter ants (Atta sexdens) have been kept.
 
Ned said:
Plzen Zoo has a number of ant species kept in it's rhino house. I can't remember off hand which species, I'd have to check my notes.
Click to expand...
Ok, now this is a thing! In this image New ant exhibit | ZooChat (the only image about ants in the Plzen Zoo gallery, by the way; I guess even zoochatters are slightly bored by ants) description by @ronnienl, it's stated "Containing 15 different kinds of ant species, as well as ant plants". Did I misread and it's 15 for both ants and plants species or just ants alone?
 
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