Oh yeah. But I wouldn’t call it culture, more like pheromone-evolved instinct. With a sprinkle of geographic determinism.

Different regions have varying soils and food sources available to the ants. Much like humans and early cement, the little civil engineers have to make it work with what’s available. Sand is more often used to make mounds. Loamy soil is easier to dig into and has enough integrity to support multiple layers of underground networks.

Some ants have invented the ant toilet. Or rather a designated spot where they all put their poop. Some use their poop to grow fungal gardens. The queen will take a bit of the garden from her original colony with her in her mouth to start another when she goes off to found her own colony, like a sourdough starter. For real.

In the Amazon there are some wild examples of specialization (as the Amazon do). Leaf cutter ants make mega-cities and create ant “highways”. Fire ants build bridges with their bodies. Bullet ants are so metal they don’t really bother building nests and just inhabit trees.

All of this, and pretty much everything ants do, is driven by pheromones and instinct. I hope we get to see a further exploration into the relationship of ant DNA variation and pheromone response in our lifetimes. Only 2.5% of leaf cutter colonies founded by a new queen make it, selection is happening at a genetic level. Whack.