Trophallaxis

Trophallaxis is a big word that means sharing food between members of a group, usually animals like ants and bees. Imagine you and your friends are at a picnic and everyone brought their favorite snacks. You decide to share your chips with your friend and they give you a piece of their sandwich. That's kind of like trophallaxis!

Ants and bees have a special way of sharing food with each other. They have a lot of tiny mouths called stomata all over their bodies, and they use these to transfer food from one to another. When one ant finds some yummy food, it eats a little bit and then goes to its friends and touches its mouth to theirs. This is called regurgitating - it's when you bring the food back up from your stomach and share it with another person.

Then, the friend eats a little bit and does the same thing with another ant or bee. This continues until all the ants or bees in the colony have had a chance to eat. This helps make sure that everyone in the group has enough food to eat, even if they weren't the ones who found it.

So, trophallaxis is like a big food-sharing chain among ants and bees, so everyone can have a tasty treat!