You would have 3 kinds of ants ones that would dig the workers the soldiers that fight and helps the workers take the food then the nurses that take care of the queen and the eggs. That is all the nurses do.
Nurses
- Thread starter hawkeyes65
- Start date
Most ants don't specialize that much, so that would be actually more unrealistic. It's interesting, but a few ants to carry brood are just going to be a drain on resources, I think.
There are ants that take care of the brood they might not be called nurses. I use to catch the ants and read about them all the time. they even have ants that do other things in some species but not going to get into that.
ok i guess i was wrong about certain ants that take care of the brood but there are ants that store food in there bodies they are called honeypot ants and they store liquid in their bodies. that would be interesting to see and something to think about.
Now that's a cool idea, ants that act as food storage. I'm not sure how useful it would be, but it is a great idea.
All ants except a few have social stomachs and can tank a lot of food.
In this picture of my Camponotus barbaricus all the ants that have white stripes are full with food.
Honeypots just push it to the extreme as they are a desert-dwelling species and need tons of reserves to survive the scarce months. The main disadvantage is that their repletes (the storage ants) are unable to move
A less overspecialized but still pretty extreme version of this can be seen in the winter ant Prenolepis imparis (they're called winter ants because they are actually active during winter as long as temperatures are above freezing point and they hibernate during the summer months - very weird ants). Their repletes can still move.
I've already suggested repletes as a way to carry over resources between campaign missions in some topic on Steam. This whole replete thing has a lot of potential.
In this picture of my Camponotus barbaricus all the ants that have white stripes are full with food.
Honeypots just push it to the extreme as they are a desert-dwelling species and need tons of reserves to survive the scarce months. The main disadvantage is that their repletes (the storage ants) are unable to move
A less overspecialized but still pretty extreme version of this can be seen in the winter ant Prenolepis imparis (they're called winter ants because they are actually active during winter as long as temperatures are above freezing point and they hibernate during the summer months - very weird ants). Their repletes can still move.
I've already suggested repletes as a way to carry over resources between campaign missions in some topic on Steam. This whole replete thing has a lot of potential.
I just read you are going to use the idea i had of honeypot ants. Do you know how your going to put them in yet and how their going to be used?