Liquid Food Sharing Among Ants Is Called Trophallaxis

Trophallaxis is a unique process where worker ants share their liquid food among each other members in a same colony. The workflow is simple: Worker ants forage for food and store the liquid food in abdomen. Later, the worker ants will share the liquid food which is stored inside the crop of the abdomen to the members by mouth-to-mouth method just like kissing.

That's so amazing! A lot of social insects sharing liquid food by trophallaxis such as termites. However, termites and ants are different in terms of scientific classification, caste system and impacts of their damage to the environment and human.

So what happen to the solid food? Worker ants cannot store the solid stuff inside the abdomen. Thus, they will carry the solid food back to the nest and pass to the immature ants, larvae. Larvae will chew the food and regurgitate to worker ants to allow the trophallaxis to be proceeded.