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AmnioticOef — Aerocephalus
Published: 2012-01-21 00:10:26 +0000 UTC; Views: 1754; Favourites: 35; Downloads: 10
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Description
A gliding member of the genus Cephalotes from the near future. These armored ants are even larger and heavier than their ancestors living today, and as a result have developed multiple flattened control surfaces to help keep them aloft. When gliding, the ants orient their limbs and abdomen into roughly the shape of a disk. [link]----------------------------------------------
Gliding ants are real, strangely enough. [link] [link]
I found this old photograph of a drawing on my hard drive and decided to post it. All I did to the original was cut out the paper background and add a shadow.
Comments and criticism welcome!
My gallery: [link]
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Comments: 25
Ha, whoops, I assumed you were commenting on [link] . There are many insects with flat abdomens [link] , though I may have overdone it a little 
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Ah that makes sense. I think that you should continue doing what you are doing. I much admire those who can draw insects, because i cannot.
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Thanks man 
I find it's almost easier to draw insects than vertebrates, since people aren't too attuned to their appearance. The closer you get to a human, the harder it is to make your drawing look realistic.
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After reading that reference, it looks like these ants glide in order to stay on their home tree. Father than fall to the forest floor when they slip, they land somewhere on their home tree and have a better chance of climbing back to their colony. So ants evolve the ability to glide to STAY in one place, rather than move to a new place. Very cool.
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Isn't it?
I suppose if they really "wanted" to fly, the workers would develop atavistic wings.
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are there any ants whose workers have wings? Or are those just wasps and bees?
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None that I know of.
Perhaps drones could be incorporated into the caste system. I imagine they'd be useful to slave-making ants, capturing fertilized queens of other species and bringing them into the nest to raise workers.
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It seems flying eusocial insects become flightless more often than the other way around, which I guess makes sense.
Still, I like the idea of the ant air force division. Perhaps workers with stingers and wings would be useful to have around.
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Hmm, male ants don't have stingers, as quintessentially male an organ as that may seem to be
I can see flightless bees evolving on an island where being blown out to sea is a danger.
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Really? Stingers are ovipositors? No kidding.
So that means male bees and wasps don't have stingers?
Well also there are flightless wasps (called velvet ants or cowkillers)
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Yup, it's one of those fun biology facts. The sterility of the female workers in hymenopteran societies allowed them to exapt their ovipositors into poison needles. What works for piercing plant stems and beetle grubs works for piercing flesh.
Although there actually is a large group of stingless bees [link] .
Yeah, cow killers are cool. They make a cute squeaking noise when poked
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Does this mean that workers with stingers can never lay eggs? And that queens can't have stingers?
re: balche---cool! Halucinogenic mead!
re squeaking: This one sounds more pissed than anything [link]
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Workers can't lay eggs, and are in fact sterile.
Good question about the queen. From Wikipedia:
"The larger drone bees, the males, do not have stingers. The female worker bees are the only ones that can sting, and their stinger is a modified ovipositor. The queen bee has a smooth stinger and can, if need be, sting skin-bearing creatures multiple times, but the queen does not leave the hive under normal conditions. Her sting is not for defense of the hive; she only uses it for dispatching rival queens, ideally before they can finish pupating. Queen breeders who handle multiple queens and have the queen odor on their hands are sometimes stung by a queen."
"re: balche---cool! Halucinogenic mead!"
Gimme some!
"re squeaking: This one sounds more pissed than anything [link]"
Yeah, maybe "cute" is too strong a word
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cool. So the stinger can function as an ovipositor and a stinger
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That is so awesome. I love the idea and I'm thrilled to know gliding ants really exist! I also like the shadow you got thar. The legs seem oddly erect, though.
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Thanks! Gliding is just the tip of the weirdness iceberg with Cephalotes [link] .
I see what you mean about the legs. I envision her as sort of alert, as if she's about to take off
Just for fun: [link] Them heads!
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Great idea, I wonder how its queen looks like
BTW: ants are awesome, I should upload some photos of my young (queen + 2 workers and brood) Formica cf. fusca colony
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Probably like a normal ant, but larger. You know more about ants, though; what do you think?
Please do post those photos
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here you go, its not quite sharp though :/ [link]
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