[masraum]

I've noticed something that I think is really odd. We have ants that spend nights in between the posts and rails of our fence. The thing that I find so odd is that they come from one fence post, walk across our gate, over the chain, and then spend the night on the other fence post. In the morning, they travel back to the other side of the gate.

We usually have our gate closed with a chain around the end that opens. On the odd occasion that the gate is left open until it gets dark, if I go out to close the gate, the end of the gate is covered in ants. I'm not sure what they do if the gate gets left open all night (do they sit on the end of the gate all night?). But if I close the gate, they then proceed to their usual spot. It's also interesting to note that these ants are polymorphic. There are two different sizes with one that's fairly small, and the others are quite large (easily twice as long and probably 8x heavier).

In the first two shots, you can see the size difference



THis shows them huddled up together between the rails and posts


The ants come from the far side, walk across the gate, and then use the chain to get to the fence on the near side.