At a time when we find it difficult to get along with people, we can find our happiness by looking at animals for inspiration.
We witnessed an inexplicable act of kindness by a group of ants, which looked like a funeral ceremony for a bee.
The video here shows a bee sitting on gravel surrounded by pinkish purple petals. Then the bees seem to be drawn towards it like a few flower petals.
We later realized that ants are carrying flower petals to the dead bees. Nicole Webinger has stated on her Facebook account, “This video was taken outside of my work by the garden. There was a dead bumblebee and the ants were bringing flower petals to lay around him. It looked like some sort of bee funeral,”
Webinger, who works in Stillwater, Minnesota, posted the video on Facebook and went viral. As we can see, this is not the first time that ants have held a funeral ceremony for a bee. That’s because Twitter user Sophia Klahr posted photos on Twitter of a circular flower arrangement ceremony with yellow flower petals surrounded by several dead bees.
“I have put Twitter back on my phone specifically to show you these circular arrangements of petals i found around multiple dead bees. If you are a scientist who knows what the hell is going on here, please tell me!” she wrote in her post.
According to IFL Science, the ants aren’t “giving the bees a dignified send-off.” “Ants live in complex colonies and use a variety of pheromones to communicate. This can be for a walking trail, to alert other ants of danger, or even just to let them know they’ve died and everyone else should probably watch out for dying, too,” IFL Science writes.
“It figures, then, that they’d be sensitive to the chemical signaling of other animals.” “In the case of these dead bees, it’s not known why they died – but their corpses are likely sending the ants some kind of message, and so it’s possible their floristry is a response to this.” The ants might also see the bees as their next meal.
Apparently dropping flower petals on bees can also be seen as an attempt to protect their diet. Therefore other scavengers cannot eat it.
This arrangement is different from a funeral ritual, where you take a UFO (unidentified flying object) and hide the food in your dorm fridge to prevent the housemates from eating it.
Another theory that comes up here is that the bees sent a signal to the ants to put them in order. Ants are willing to clean and practice necrophoresis to keep their colonies tidy. “As an adaptation that lessens the spread of pathogens, necrophoresis sees the ants gather their smelly dead and carry them away to a dedicated tomb. Some colonies even have specialized undertaker ants for the job.”
Some colonies also have groups of ants specialized for pollination. Ants can do the same thing, but with bees – covering the carcass will prevent it from attracting attention and attraction.
According to, Nature Knows
(Photos right to original owner)
