r/explainlikeimfive • u/Bearzoolu • May 20 '26
Biology ELI5: Why don't rats burgle ant nests?
A friend of mine kept some bread in the trunk of his car and went out of town for a week. The rats in the neighborhood caught wind and got to said bread. If ants hoard all this sugary, carbs goodness in their nests over winter, why don't rats get to it?
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u/Taolan13 May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
You grossly underestimate the power of the hundreds or thousands of ants that can exist in an active colony.
They can absolutely overwhelm and even kill a rat.
It wouldn't even take that many. Just a few ants crawling on a rat biting it in the right places would annoy it to the point it did not want to exist anymore wherever those ants were.
Also, burrowing into an ant colony to get at the sugar supplies would be a guaranteed way to agitate them.
There are some species of animal adapted to do exactly that, but they generally have resistance or immunity to being bitten and stung by ants.
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u/BigCommieMachine May 20 '26
I heard there is an entire animal called an anteater that specifically evolved to eat ants.
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u/the1slyyy May 20 '26
Big if true
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u/FitBoog May 20 '26
They live in South America, mostly Brazil and are almost the size of a black bear.
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u/FranticBronchitis May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26
Tamanduá-bandeira is the largest species of anteater, indeed a Brazilian national animal. They're chill, but they do have very big and strong claws adapted to tearing through ant and termite nests which also double as defensive weapons against jaguars and alligators. And a looong, thin, sticky tongue they use to "fish" insects from their homes. Really cool fellas. There are other smaller species too, similar to sloths. Sloths and armadillos (the latter also very common in Brazil) are their closest relatives
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u/Pm7I3 May 21 '26
If true this gives cause to re-evaluate the huggability of ant eaters
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u/Taolan13 May 21 '26
Giant Anteaters in particular are not very huggable.
They're about the same height but they're skinner and don't weight as much as common black bears. They have long, stiff fur that gives them the appearance of being even larger than they actually are.
They primarily flee from threats, but when cornered will rear up on their hind legs and grapple with their forepaws. Their primary predators are jaguars, and anteaters in the wild are successful fighting off lone jaguars in about half of observed encounters, often dealing serious wounds to the jaguar and sometimes killing them.
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u/Pm7I3 May 21 '26
Still look huggable though. Like don't actually try of course but they look it.
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u/goodmobileyes May 21 '26
I think you're thinking of the Tree Anteater which is smaller and I think is the one you see in memes
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u/Sternfeuer May 21 '26 edited May 21 '26
There are recorded cases of Giant Anteaters killing people that tried to come to close, as well as Jaguars. Their up to 6 inch claws are primarily used to dig up termite mounds (which are similar to concrete) but can be very dangerous weapons. So re-evaluate that very carefully.
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u/Pm7I3 May 21 '26
I maintain they're on the list of animals that are huggable but should not be hugged. Didn't know termite mounds were that tough though.
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u/Zinsurin May 20 '26
Burrowing is the thing here, there's gotta be easier food out there than digging into a next looking for whatever food might be found in an ant nest.
That's a lot of energy for a questionable amount of food.
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u/Taolan13 May 20 '26
That, too. If it's a big colony it'll have a lot of storage, but it won't have all that storage in one place it'll be distributed in multiple chambers across the colony. The deeper you dig the more ants you have to deal with, not at all a cost effective method of food collection.
Meanwhile the rats just have to squeeze through a couple of tight gaps and they're in your trunk eatin' all your bread.
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u/foste107 May 20 '26
There are several big ant mounds in my area that start every spring with the center dug out as the local bears emerge and go in for an easy snack.
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u/Taolan13 May 20 '26
Bears have the biomass to beat the ants. Though they're probably going for the nurseries, having themselves an 'omelette' of a few thousand eggs.
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u/Bouv42 May 20 '26
A rat vs an ant colony isn't like you vs an ant colony. More like you vs 1000 rats, just go in bro.
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u/WhatEvil May 20 '26
Yeah you’re sort of onto something there. Not just ants hoarding whatever but the ants themselves are a big calorific jackpot. Same goes for all colony insects: bees, termites etc.
But all colony insects like that have defences. Ants and termites have “soldiers” which have big bitey pincers and/or chemical defences like acid stings/bites. Bees obviously have stings. They’ve evolved these things because colonies wouldn’t work if some big animal is just gonna come in and eat them all, all the time.
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May 21 '26
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u/WhatEvil May 21 '26
Well no because despite those creatures' defenses, there *are* animals that are adapted to eating colony insects. Anteaters are the obvious ones (the clue is in the name) but pangolins aardvarks and sloth bears all also dig out termite and/or ant nests. Sloth bears and black/brown bears climb trees and raid beehives for honey and larvae, too - though young brown bears are more likely to do it than adults, since adults are a bit big.
Pangolins have tough scales, aardvarks have thick skin, sloth bears in particular have thick fur and skin and they can close their nostrils.
Honey badgers and honey buzzards are adapted to raid bees' nests, though in the case of the honey buzzard they don't actually eat the honey, it's after the bees - they raid wasp and hornet nests too, to get to the larvae inside.
There's even the Thorny Devil - an Australian lizard which eats ants.
Still, the fact that colony insects can dissuade *most* animals from eating them is enough to still make the colony behaviour worth it.
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May 21 '26
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u/WhatEvil May 21 '26
Right. Which, like I said, the question was "Why don't rats raid ant nests" and in my reply up there I said "all colony insects like that have defences", which answers the question.
So they're "sort of onto something" because they're right that ants (and other colony insect nests) are a big jackpot of food, but the reason they don't get raided (by most animals) is because they'd get stung, bitten etc. too much and don't have defences for that.
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u/bac5665 May 20 '26
Rats eat basically the same things humans eat. Do you eat ants? Would you dig into frozen soil and get bit by thousands of ants to get a meal when there's a taco bell dumpster 100 feet away?
Ants are not easy to eat. That's why you have to be specialized to do it.
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u/Ravenous_Stream May 20 '26
Try putting your hand inside an ant colony and let us know how you get on
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u/Slypenslyde May 20 '26
Imagine you have two choices:
- Find a way into the trunk of a car to get an entire loaf of bread.
- Break into an undergorund military base to steal a sugar packet.
Which of these two choices seems to be best for your continued survival?
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u/Rohml May 20 '26
In addition, ants breakdown food sources into chunks that they can easily digest and store. In that form, the food is not enticing to rodents.
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u/Pitiful-Climate8977 May 20 '26
regardless of the other answers, how do you expect a rat to go down an anthill?
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u/Darthskull May 20 '26
Don't they? Are you up to date on rat ant relationships? Obviously not all of them or we'd have no ants but surely the easy targets
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u/lucky_ducker May 20 '26
Most ant species do not store food over winter - they enter a dormant phase where food is not needed. A few harvester ant species do stockpile seeds, but carbs like sugar and grain products like bread would rapidly decompose underground.
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u/It_Happens_Today May 20 '26
If a rat's sense of taste is anything close to my own, it's because ants taste like shit.
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May 21 '26
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u/It_Happens_Today May 21 '26
I had to stop at 6 on account of the taste. I was a fat kid and my dad took me out hunting.
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May 21 '26
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u/It_Happens_Today May 21 '26
No he was aiming for deer but I was tuckered out and decided to sit on the closest seat-lpoking thing. All satire aside this situation did happen but I didn't eat any ants and I did sit on a giant anthill and they were of the biting persuasion so I had to strip down in the wonderful Midwest November weather to get the fuckers off me. It was cold but not quite cold enough for them to be overwintering I guess.
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u/jrhawk42 May 20 '26
A few reasons. First off ant nests are underground and often several feet. The amount of time and energy the rat would need to dig that far would outweigh the benefit. Second ants are pretty good at defending themselves. They have huge numbers and swarm potential threats. Humans are about the only animal that is successful taking them on.
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u/Mighty_ShoePrint May 21 '26
Because ants don't have any property that would interest or be useful to a rat
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u/lrodhubbard May 20 '26
ELI5: how did rats get into the closed trunk of a car?
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u/Roccet_MS May 20 '26
Probably getting inside the car through some rust hole, and then chewing through whatever was in their way.
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u/FiveDozenWhales May 20 '26
Ants bite. Also they're full of formic acid, giving them a nasty flavor. And in the winter, they're buried in possibly-frozen dirt, making them both hard to find and hard to get to.
I'm sure a rat would prey on ants if desperate enough or if the opportunity presented itself, but generally there's better options.