A video showing “piles” of ants spotted “writhing around” on what appears to be a sidewalk in Minnesota has gone viral on Reddit.
The video was shared in a post titled “While out on a walk I came across these ants. What is going on?” uploaded on August 18 by Linnea, a 30-year-old dog groomer in Monticello, Minnesota, under the username u/Latter_Composer_2235. The clip has amassed 18,000 upvotes and thousands of comments in the r/whatisit subreddit.
“I live in Minnesota and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Linnea wrote in the caption. “There were two ‘piles’ and they were all just writhing around.”
Linnea, who did not shared her last name, told Newsweek: “I had not personally seen anything like it before. The consensus on Reddit was that they were having a battle for territory.”
The footage sparked a range of reactions and speculation on Reddit, but Mark Willis, a professor of biology at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio who viewed the footage, told Newsweek that the exact cause is hard to determine.
“It’s difficult to tell for certain what’s going on here,” Willis said. “My first guess is that there may have been some local rain the previous night and that we are looking at the ant colony putting out its reproductive males and females.”
Willis explained that ant colonies often release their winged reproductive caste—with both males and females—during optimal conditions such as after rainfall, when the softened soil makes it easier for mated females to begin new colonies.
“These winged reproductives often are ‘cued’ to emerge, mate and disperse by a recent rain,” he said. “They are usually guarded by the workers and soldiers as they emerge.”
However, Willis acknowledged that the video could also depict a violent territorial dispute. “Alternatively, we are looking at two species of ants at ‘war’ with each other,” he said. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell with any certainty which of these alternatives we are seeing—or another explanation I’m not thinking of.”
The possibility of interspecies conflict aligns with findings from a May 2024 study published in the Journal of Insect Science, which explored competitive behavior among ant colonies.
“With their unique colony structure, competition between ants can be particularly intense, with colonies potentially willing to sacrifice large numbers of individuals to obtain resources or territory under the right circumstances,” the researchers wrote.
The paper also noted that while ants often fight over territory, not all encounters between different species lead to violence.
“Early anecdotal reports established that ants of different species do not always fight when they encounter one another,” the study said. “The probability of fighting was dependent on several variables including levels of aggression in the individual, the behavioral state of the colony, and the relative numbers of potential combatants.”
Users on Reddit were intrigued by the unusual scene discovered during the walk, with several sharing their best guesses on what may be happening.
One user, u/freak4pb13, quipped, “What is this, a war for ants?” while u/Demon_Lord_Lucifer also noted: “Ant war, can’t quite tell but I think it’s 2 opposing colonies of the same species, it’s a good old invasion.”
Others described similar scenes from their own backyards.
U/CallousDisregard13 wrote: “This is exactly what happens in my yard! I have a sizeable tree with a massive black ants network in and around it. My neighbor in his backyard has a sizeable red ant colony. Every year, probably twice a year ill all of a sudden see thousands of ants marching down the sidewalk from my neighbors yard, into the grass in my yard where they do battle lol. It’s both entertaining and unnerving…”
U/DP_505 also said: “In my uncle’s backyard, he had a path, on one side, red ants and the other black ants. Every summer they would go at it until the path was covered in dead ants, even the flying ants would get involved. It was like something you would see on a National Geographic documentary.”
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about ants? Let us know via [email protected].
Reference
Champer, J., & Schlenoff, D. (2024). Battles between ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae): a review. Journal of Insect Science, 24(3), 25. https://doi.org/10.1093/jisesa/ieae064
The post Woman Goes on Walk in Minnesota, Shock at What She Finds: ‘What Is Going On?’ appeared first on Newsweek.
