This summer, I decided to clear up the front of the front garden of our house. It has never really been a garden, more like a patch of earth that killed anything we placed on it except weeds. Besides being unkempt, the wall was also very close to fall. Therefore I decided to try and fix it this year. I dug up a few large bushes, and started taking the wall apart. This is where I found ant colonies after ant colonies for every top layer stones that I removed. It was very fascinating to see!
It was interesting to see that they all had their pupae on the top layer of the wall stones but they quickly moved them away deeper inside the ground once exposed. They could literally move all the pupae withing 3-5 minutes! I assume that they have different locations to house the pupae, depending on the temperature, and that this maneuver was more or less something they do every day.
Along with the ants, I found this huge beetle. It al almost sure that it is a Carabus goryi or a very close relative. The Carabus genus is huge, with 94 subgenera, 959 species and 2300 subspecies. This makes it hard to tell which one exactly it may be!
I love finding these universes of life, but also hate it, because I ruin the day, if not the lives, for the ants living there. I guess this is “The Circle of Life”, but on the other hand, I didn’t take their lives to support mine. It was unnecessary in the whole scheme of things.
Anyway – I convinced myself that these ants take one day at a time and are ready to face any catastrophe, that life may throw at them, including a human wanting to make their garden look more civilized.
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