Environment

Ants Clean Food Scraps off New York Streets

A new study finds that armies of ants are keeping New York City clean by eating food litter left by the pedestrians who walk the streets of the city that never sleeps.

Writing in the journal Global Change Biology, a team of researchers reveals how ants and other arthropods on a stretch of just 150 blocks of median strips in Manhattan can remove the equivalent of about 60,000 pounds of hot dogs or 600,000 potato chips each year.

Lead researcher Elsa Youngsteadt from North Carolina State University says the insects are helping New Yorkers by competing with rats for food.

“You may not like ants, but you probably like rats even less,” she told The New York Times.

Ants and other arthropods recycle as much as 59 percent of the food litter that humans leave on New York City streets each day.