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Central Park Zoo News
Zoo Crawls with Thousands of New Residents
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©WCS/J.Maher
| The Central Park Zoo has more than doubled its population. The new additions may be tiny, but they can certainly carry their weight—50 times more, to be exact. Not only that; they do it every day, putting any gym rat to shame. These Herculean creatures are leafcutter ants, and visitors can see them at a new exhibit in the Zoo’s Rain Forest.
Leafcutter ants are native to Central and South America, where they can be found in every layer of the rainforest. They are also the most abundant species there—millions of ants can live in a single colony! Known as “nature’s gardeners,” leafcutter ants do just what their name suggests: They break down plant material. This helps enrich the soil and encourage new plant growth. As the rate of deforestation grows, this is an increasingly important task.
Ant colonies have strict hierarchies, with groups of workers and soldiers serving the largest member, the queen. The soldiers guard the colony and fight off intruders. The workers are divided into five “castes” determined by size. From biggest to smallest, the ranks include foragers, gardeners, those that chop up leaves, those that distribute leaf bits to the fungi, and those that care for the fungi. All soldiers and workers are female. Males only visit to mate with the queen, and die shortly after.
The only fertile female of the colony, the queen can lay up to a thousand eggs a year. All will be female and sterile. Males are produced from unfertilized eggs. Ant colonies can live up to 20 years, or as long as the queen lives. At the Zoo, her highness is about 10 years old.
“It’s amazing how driven the ants are to perpetuate the colony,” says Bruce Foster, Animal Collections Manager. “Visitors are fascinated to learn that they never stop working. The entire colony seems to be run by one incredibly efficient mind.”
The remodeled Rain Forest exhibit features a large, comprehensive view of the ants’ ecosystem and live, magnified video footage of the ants.
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