In a truly bizarre video that must be seen to be believed, a group of ants cover a dead bee in flowers as if they are attending a funeral for bugs.
The video below shows a dead bee lying in a wreath of pink flower petals. The footage shows a small group of ants dragging the petals, one at a time, over to the bee’s lifeless body.
“This video was taken outside of my work by the garden. There was a dead bumblebee and the ants were bringing flower petals to lay around him. It looked like some sort of bee funeral,” Nicole Webinger wrote when she first posted the video on Facebook.
The video quickly went viral and it wasn’t long before viewers started sharing their own footage of these ‘insect funerals.’
Sophie Klahr quickly posted photos on Twitter of a similar situation in her backyard:
I have put Twitter back on my phone specifically to show you these circular arrangements of petals i found around multiple dead bees. if you are a scientist who knows what the hell is going on here, please tell me! pic.twitter.com/h3D8u89WxG
— sophie klahr (@sophieklahr) August 28, 2022
“I have put Twitter back on my phone specifically to show you these circular arrangements of petals i found around multiple dead bees. If you are a scientist who knows what the hell is going on here, please tell me!” Sophie said in her tweet.
IFL Science tried to shed some light on what is actually happening. “Ants live in complex colonies and use a variety of pheromones to communicate. This can be for a walking trail, to alert other ants of danger, or even just to let them know they’ve died and everyone else should probably watch out for dying, too,” they shared.
It’s entirely possible that the ants’ behavior is similar to a warning signal.
Watch the video below and see this strange behavior for yourself!