INSIDE THE SMALL CIRCLE OF ANTS

When you have some kind of macro equipment at your disposal, spectacular shooting opportunities appear everywhere, even in the most boring places. On the following photograph ...
(Enlargeable)
... you can see the gathering of ants around the small edible stain of greasy sauce, remains of my lunch, that I served to the cats. A bit of that thing dropped out of the dish, and the ants from the nearby hole in the wall soon discovered the new feeding ground.

These are Tetramorium caespitum, or Pavement ants ... I think ... I found many similar looking species in my Internet search, so I'm not 100 % sure about the species. Anyway, these ants always start these collective feeding and gathering actions in a very organized way ... forming a circle around the stain ...

... and eating their way to the center.

The ants eat ... and the circular stain gets smaller and smaller. In the following short video ...

... you can take a look at one ant cleaning his had and jaws, while others are feeding around him.
Near the end of the feeding process ...

... the scene looks like this ... the ants are consuming the epicenter of the food drop ... and soon there will be no grease on my terrace.
As always in these posts on HIVE, photographs and video are my work.