Ants cover a dead bee with flower petals,In what looks to be a traditional funeral.
Oh my goodness, this is amazing.
We should take a cue from the animal kingdom when we struggle to get along with others.
especially a mysterious deed performed by a swarm of ants.
The ants appear to be holding what appears to be a bumblebee funeral.
A bumble bee is seen in the video resting on some gravel and being encircled by pinkish-purple flower petals.
Then you notice a few petals edging closer to the bee.
At that point, you notice that ants are bringing flower petals to the dead bee.
“I shot this movie at the garden, which is near where I work. The ants were bringing flower petals to scatter around the deceased bumblebee. Nicole Webinger posted a picture of what she thought “looked like a bee funeral” on Facebook.
The display stunned Webinger, a worker in Stillwater, Minnesota.
The rest of the internet was also.
Her video ultimately became popular.
It appears that some ants have thrown funerals for bees before.
I have put Twitter back on my phone specifically to show you these circular arrangements of petals i found around multiple dead bees. if you are a scientist who knows what the hell is going on here, please tell me! pic.twitter.com/h3D8u89WxG
— sophie klahr (@sophieklahr) August 28, 2022
A Twitter user named Sophia Klahr shared images of circular floral arrangements with yellow flower petals encircling a few dead bees.
In order to show you these circular arrangements of petals that I discovered surrounding numerous dead bees, I have reactivated Twitter on my phone. She said in her post, “If you are a scientist who knows what the hell is going on here, please tell me!
The ants aren’t “offering the bees a decent send-off,” claims IFL Science.
“Ants employ a variety of pheromones to communicate and live in intricate colonies. IFL Science states that this might be for a walking path, to warn other ants of danger, or even merely to let them know they have passed away and that everyone else should probably be on the lookout for passing away as well.
Therefore, it makes sense that they would be perceptive to other creatures’ chemical signals.
It’s unknown why these deceased bees perished, but their bodies are probably sending the ants a message, thus it’s probable that the ants’ floristry is a reaction to this.
The bees can possibly be the next meal for the ants.
Perhaps the bees are trying to hide their food from other scavengers by covering it with flower petals.
The arrangement would thus be less of a burial custom and more like concealing leftover takeout in your dorm fridge as a UFO (unidentified foiled object) to deter nosy roommates from devouring them.
Another hypothesis is that the bees sent the ants a signal to clean up their act.
Ants enjoy cleaning and use necrophoresis to keep the surroundings of their colonies orderly.
“The ants gather their foul dead and transport them to a designated tomb as a necrophoresis adaptation that slows the transmission of infections. Even undertaker ants with specific training are found in some nests.
The ants may be carrying out the same operation, but with bees; by hiding the corpse, they would avoid drawing attention to it.