Hello ,

Keeping ants seems like a fun and simple hobby to many, but there is one commitment that is often overlooked when people start keeping ants. The longevity of a colony far exceeds the usual expectations when we think of tiny ants.

Ants we find outside of the nest often only live for a few months before they pass away, but at the heart of the colony there is a single, long-lived queen. Queens, however, have an average lifespan of between 15 and 25 years, with some species being documented to live up to 30 years in captivity. Ants are thus the insects with the longest life span of any insect!

If you compare pet ants to parrots, they have a similar long-term commitment, as the average life expectancy of most parrots are 15 to 30 years. I personally think that as the ant keeping hobby expands and grows, we will soon learn that there are not just a few select species that can live for up to 30 years. I also believe strongly that there will be some species that will even outlive the 30-year mark in captivity.

This, however, gets a bit more complicated when you start looking at species that can have multiple queens of different ages within one colony. Pheidole megacephala is one of these species that I strongly believe will be able to outlive the 30-year mark without a problem. The issue comes in at whether the colony that is being kept is seen as a super organism or as individuals. If the prior, then with some new queens being introduced into the colony during nuptial flights, the super organism that is one colony should theoretically be able to live without a cap on the lifespan.

Thus, even though ants are small they require a very long-term commitment to keep them as pets!

PS: If you missed Issue #43 Please go and read it out here. I had some reports that it went through to spam and not to your inbox for some reason!

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