Hello folks who wonder if insects shave or wax their legs for summer,

On a recent kayak outing at Alviso, I spotted something unusual floating in the water.



These things were floating in the hundreds, so I decided to pick one up and see for myself which party I did not get invited to.

Turns out, these look like
Pavement ants. But why are they wearing wings, don't they know ants don't fly and Halloween is still 4 months away.


Virgin queens and males will leave their colony on specific times of the year to find mates from other colonies and start their families. How they decide which day to meet and where without using Tinder still leaves me dumbfounded.

The reason they have wings is so they can disperse away from their colony and reduce the chances of inbreeding. These flights are called
nuptial flights.

Below is a typical male, one thing that helps to distinguish male ants from females is their tiny heads as compared to their beefy bodies, since they don't need big brains because they are thinking of just one thing.

Will Warriors win the finals? and getting laid. And yes, they die shortly after mating.




Females on the other hand after bidding goodbye to her lover, will take off her wings and try to find a place to lay her eggs.

Also the queens and the males have bigger eyes as compared to the workers, so they can find each other in flight.




In this case, after the mating, when they descended from the mating flight they landed on the water and none of them were wearing a life jacket.

Another thing I spotted on the way back is a reminder on how our actions affect the environment and those sharing this space.




A deceased California Gull might have struggled and spent its last days in vain trying to free itself from this fishing lure which might have been separated from the fishing line and caught on to its wings.

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