Take an Ant to Lunch! Try this experiment and then tell us what you discover!   What You Need: A place where you see ants Sugar, cheese or meat, lemon or lime, salt A paper plate A watch Paper, pencil, markers Question: What kinds of food do ants like? 1) First, find a place where you see ants and ant hills . 2) Then, put a food sample on a paper plate. Use foods that are sweet, fatty, sour, or salty. 3) Put each sample out one at a time. 4) Time the ants for fifteen minutes. Count and record the number of ants at each five minute interval. 5) Make a bar graph that shows the time and number of ants that respond to the food sample. Which food did the ants like the most? 6) Display your hungry, hungry ant bar graph on the fridge or in your room! A Scientific Explanation: An ant tastes food through receptors located in its antennae and mouth. This is what separates you from the ants. Ants don’t have taste receptors for aspertame, the artificial sweetener found in diet soda, but you do! EXTRA! EXTRA! Have the ants take the soft drink challenge! Repeat the experiment with a diet soda and a regular soda. Think about it, why would an ant every go on a diet? I discovery that ant's eat salt because when I was watching the ant it eat all the salt I put there -Shanique M. If you notice an ant, wait till it comes back, and when it does rub on its trail it will act confused ,then pick it up and put it down on the other side of your rubbing it will find it's way you might notice it follows the way back. The reason this happens is it has a scent (if you have no scent you don't smell) (Not like if your nose smells something) on its legs it and it comes off on the place it walks. They smell there way back. Ants do not see far some army ants are blind. When you rub you erase their scent and it can't see its scent. When you pick it up and put it can smell again. -Eric Z. My discovery was that ants have a big stomach they eat a lot in one day. That is what I discovered by doing this experiment. -Stephanie C. My ant ate a sweet potato and regular soda and diet. -Mona V. The ants that I used mostly liked sweet stuff. -Leah L. I found out that ants eat sour things and salt and sweet things! -Dallas G. I found that the ants respond to the food in five minutes -Jade S. I found out that the ants started to eat it and 15 minutes all I saw was some crumbs. Thank you for teaching me that experiment. -Tara A. I found out that ants eat a lot of different things. -Jennifer L.   Ants are attracted by small amounts of salty foods. They also eat dry food more. -Kenneth L. I found out that they can carry 10 times their own weight! -Monia T. I discovered that ants like all kinds of foods. but the one they like best is watermelon. -Kathryn k. We found out that ants like fatty and sweet foods. -Corinella s. The ants enjoyed sugary foods very much. They did not show interest in the other foods. We were waiting for about 15 minutes before the ants found the sugary food. -WillowWood That it is cool to see ants work together. -Alyssa B. I think that ants like regular soda because they like regular sugar, like the sugar you would find naturally in fruit. -Heather L. Ants really like burgers because they taste really good. -Isaac A. In this experiment I used sugar, ham, lime, and salt. In my graph you can see that the ants reacted to sugar and ham the most. It was not real hard for me to find an ant hill. And I actually did the same experiment with 2 other ant hills just to get the same data. The ants in hill 1 went directly to the sugar. after they carried all that to the hill (it took about 1 hour.) then they came back for the ham I just put 1 slice in there but I sort of sliced it up a bit they went to it also and brought it back to the hill. The second hill was just the same they did the same thing. The third hill though was different they actually rubbed there antennas on the salt and lime. -Adrienne G. I discovered that ants like cheese the most and salt the least. - Franli T. That science isn't just boring it's also lots and lots of fun!!! - Satvika I. Ants like cheese the most. -Shannon R.