Cecil made some reassuring points about ants being clean and germ-free due to evolution and their excessive grooming, so not to worry about ants bringing diseases all over your Oreos. Yet there was no mention of ant droppings. Ants eat, therefore they must get rid of the waste. How safe are their leavings? Granted what they excrete can’t be very much due to their tiny size, but it would add up with more ants entering the picture (or cookie jar).
IANA entomologist, but are we even sure worker ants have droppings? I know that bees don’t; they don’t even have an anus. Their food is parctically pure energy and it all goes into work and heat with virtually no waste.
Anyone have more facts?
Wasn’t that actually a staff column and not Cecil?
Well, other than carbon dioxide and water, of course. Many people fail to realize that the primary excretory organ is the lungs, or whatever equivalent an animal uses.
Even eating nothing but honey, there’s sure to be some waste, but it’s conceivable that it just builds up in the bee’s body until it dies.
Welcome to the SDMB, Luna.
The item in question is actually a Straight Dope Staff Report and not a Straight Dope column. The Straight Dope column is written by Cecil Adams himself. Staff Reports are written by members of the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board and occasionally by guests. Consequently, I’ll move this thread to the Comments on Staff Reports forum.
When commenting on an online column or staff report it is appreciated if you can provide a link. Doing so can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post, making sure to leave a blank space on either side of it. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mantsdisease.html
:smack: Thanks for the lesson…I’ll pay closer attention next time.