Ants Fighting on Kitchen Table
I spotted these two ants that had gotten into the house on June 23, 2024. For some reason they decided to duke it out on the kitchen table. They were pretty evenly matched.
The one with the red thorax looks like a New York Carpenter Ant, which is a species that gets into our kitchen pretty regularly. The all-black one is most likely the closely-related Black Carpenter Ant. These two species seem to be about equally common around here.
There really wasn’t any need for them to be fighting, they were nowhere near their nests and there were no nearby food items. It might just be a racial hatred thing.
At first appearance, it looked like Red was the more ferocious and was getting the better of things.
But, looking a bit closer, we can see that Black had hold of Red’s antenna.
I think this was giving Black a big advantage. Ants are pretty well armored, and when they fight they actually have quite a bit of difficulty doing any serious damage to each other. But their antennae are sensitive. Getting an antenna hold is basically equivalent of grabbing a person by their nose with a pair of vice-grips. It not only allowed Black to inflict pain on Red, she also had control of Red’s head and could keep her from grabbing her legs or getting hold of her own antenna. So, basically all Black had to do was to hold on until Red got tired.
They kept at this for some time, and I eventually tossed both of them out the back door, so I don’t know who won. Or, for that matter, if anyone actually “won” – they may have eventually just disengaged and went their separate ways.