ANTSTORE World of Ants

[leo94]

Hi, I've recently got my first ants. I enjoy listening to music and watching films and just wondering if loud music or loud films will upset the ants at all or if noise does not affect them.

Thanks

Leo

[MrIglo]

Noise only affects them if its very loud. Vibration is more harmful. To avoide vibration dont place them too close to your speakers.

You can also observe them and turn the music on at full volume. Is there panic inside the nest? I think no.

With best regards

[Andie]

My Cataglyphis go mad when the dog barks but they ignore me if i shout, but then so does my wife

[baumarkthammer]

It depends on the species very much and of course on how comfortable they are in their nest or in other words wether they think they are safe in their nest or not.
For example my Messor capitatus panic when I lift their box with their testing tube since they normally live in ground only. For contrast my Pseudomyrmex pallidus, who live in trees, don´t seem to notice when I lift their box or when they stand next to my boxes while Messor capitatus sometimes panic when someone in the house uses a drill.
Cataglyphis spp. will panic, too, since they mostly live in deserts and other habitats where there aren´t many vibrations or the ants are very sensitive for vibrations so that they can even feel them in desert sand.

This sensitivity to vibration could partly be caused by the stridulation most (or was it all of them?) ants use. It is a way of communicating without touching or using pheromones. Mostly human ear can´t hear it but in some cases you can. For example Acromyrmex do it so loud that you can hear them without any mechanical help. But once when I moved a Myrmica rubra colony I noticed that you can hear their stridulation, too, when you let severyl workers run over a pice of aluminium foil.
However the vibrations of music and so on will probably affect this way of comunication and cause the ants to panic.

[Zagone]

To put it simply, a lot but not all ants react to vibrations, and the degree of alarm and panic varies heavily. So since sound is vibrations in the air, naturally stronger sounds can disturb them as well. I think deeper sounds disturb them more than higher.