Real life is far, far stranger than fiction.
The formidable research skills of blogger and Shrewsday regular, Pseu, have necessitated a quick extra update post today.
In a recent post, ‘On The Edge’, I bewailed the sorry plight of a herd of innocent aphids, who were being devoured by some exceptionally nasty looking red ants on a local foxglove I know.
Why, I implored, did the little aphids not run away, while there was still time? Why stay on the Foxglove of Doom to meet an untimely end?
I’ll tell you why. The answer is simple, but priceless.
So priceless indeed, that I felt it needed an extra post to avoid defamation court cases from scores of angry ants in the future.
Pseu pointed out that the ants are not killing and eating the aphids.
They are milking them.
Yes: the aphids are just so many docile cows to these industrious little creatures.
Here is Pseu’s research. She’s thorough.
Wiki has this to say
Ant mutualism
Ant tending aphids
Ant extracting honeydew from an aphid
Some species of ants “farm” aphids, protecting them on the plants they eat, eating the honeydew that the aphids release from the terminations of their alimentary canals. This is a “mutualistic relationship”.
These “dairying ants” “milk” the aphids by stroking them with their antennae.
Some farming ant species gather and store the aphid eggs in their nests over the winter. In the spring, the ants carry the newly hatched aphids back to the plants.
Some species of dairying ants (such as the European yellow meadow ant, Lasius flavus)manage large “herds” of aphids that feed on roots of plants in the ant colony.
Queens that are leaving to start a new colony take an aphid egg to found a new herd of underground aphids in the new colony. These farming ants protect the aphids by fighting off aphid predators.
An interesting variation in ant-aphid relationships involves lycaenid butterflies and Myrmica ants. For example, Niphanda fusca butterflies lay eggs on plants where ants tend herds of aphids.
The eggs hatch as caterpillars which feed on the aphids. The ants do not defend the aphids from the caterpillars but carry the caterpillars to their nest.
In the nest, the ants feed the caterpillars, which produce honeydew for the ants. When the caterpillars reach full size, they crawl to the colony entrance and form cocoons. After two weeks, butterflies emerge and take flight.
Some bees in coniferous forests also collect aphid honeydew to make “forest honey”.
Pseu also found some film from YouTube which you can find here.
So there you have it.
An unreserved apology to all those maligned red ants out there.
Aphids may safely graze.
Kate Shrewsday 
Wow! That was very interesting. The circles of life are so intriguing and spectacular in their own way, aren’t they, and those busy ants, milking aphids for all their worth.
Quick question: are you having any problems either receiving comments or replying to them lately? I have and am trying to figure out if if it me and my computer, or if it is since there have been some changes with wordpress.
If I have I haven’t noticed, Penny, although yours was posted at 2:25 and has just arrived at 6:15. i have heard of some problems recently…but I can’t remember where I heard it from.
Hope mine are all coming through loud and clear!
Yours are, Kate. I’m having problems leaving comments. It takes sometimes 15 minutes to leave on other wordpress site. That was troublesome enough, but, sometime after I posted my last post, I suddenly lost all of my general settings. I can compose drafts and download pictures, but, I can’t preview them and now I can’t even publish. Can you hear me screaming all the way across the pond?
I can! It is my earnest hope that a happiness engineer restores order with all speed, Penny!
Very interesting! I remember a little about the “milking of aphids” from a random nature special I saw in elementary school, but the rest was total news to me!
And your final line made me grin. 🙂
Hi Amelia! Elementary schools must be much better than our infant schools. I had no idea. It’s one of the zaniest things I have ever heard. Very Monty Python 😀
Overjoyed someone got the last line…
Thanks, Kate.
Once upon a time, I “learned” (or, more accurately, heard . . . and promptly misplaced the information) that ants milk aphids like so many cows. Moo! 😀
Lovely to remember it all over again, isn’t it, Nancy?
Bonkers. Totally bonkers.
Well, thank you Kate!
So glad it wasn’t insecticide. It was pastoral care instead?
Pasturised care, maybe…
(ouch)
I hope the honeydew is pasteurized esp with all the bacteria infecting everything.
😀 One can never be too careful when one is part of a busy ants’ colony, Carl…
Kate! Not only do you write long, fascinating posts daily, but you manage to have a dedicated researcher of your own. How do you do it? Have your talents no bounds?
Ah, Speccy, Pseu is a talented blogger in her own right who happens, kindly, to do a little extra on my posts…she has a knack of finding just the right snippet to further the debate. As today’s post demonstrates 🙂 It’s worth taking a look at hers, a really lovely take on life…
My giddy aunt! Who would have thought, very strange. We live and learn.
😀
As wtih Tilly Bud and insect warnings, can you do the same for me when it comes to bovines? 😉 I subscribe to Gary Larson’s view on their true nature