Facts about Ants:
Facts about ants? If it is what made you come here then be confident that you are at the right place. So let’s start from the very basic:
What are Ants?
Ants are special kind of insects that evolve from around 140 million years ago. These creatures have a distinct body shape comprising of antennae, a quiet large head with mandibles.
Ants also have six legs and a very compressed body. Ants belong to the family of Formicidae and thus are fairly strong and fast.
Facts about Ants:
- Except for Greenland, Iceland and Antarctica and various other nations, Ants are almost found in almost every part of the planet.
- Ants are capable of carrying food that is fifty times heavier than their own weight and that’s why they are termed as the strongest in view of their size proportion.
In this way, their diet consists of nectar leaves, seeds, small insects and also honeydew.
- The way ants communicate is fairly complicated but very fun to know. Ants produce chemical signals that are detected by the antennae of other family members.
Body parts also play a role in the transmission of these chemicals through stridulations.
In this form, vibrations play a significant part in the transferring of sound waves from one body to another. This is the reason ants do not have ears. These ways are used to communicate about food and danger!
- Ants generally have a longer life span. Some pests only live for a couple days or months but that is not the case with ants. Instead of a type ant live up to 30 years.
- Another interesting fact about ants is that the largest ants nest was found in Argentina in early 2000 which consisted of around 3700 miles.
In fact, it was comprised of 33 ants populations and thus contained millions of ants. This also leads to the aspect that ants live in colonies (nests). These nests are constructed by female workers majorly.
- Ants do not have lungs. However, their oxygen requirement is fulfilled through the tiny holes from where air enters and carbon dioxide is removed from the same holes.
Therefore, although they do not have lungs but yet they are not deprived of the passage of air.
- At night the worker ants displace the eggs and larvae into the nest to save them from the cold.
During the daytime, the worker ants transfer the eggs and larvae of the colony to the top of the nest in order to keep them warm.
If a worker is able to detect a good source for food, it leaves a scent so that the other ants in the colony can follow the track for food.
- The largest ant that had been discovered is not alive anymore, unfortunately.
Its fossils reveal that it was about 2.4 inches (6cm) and it seems that it has wingspans of around 6 inches as well. To make you aware of this big size, let us tell you that the average size of an ant is around 2 to 2.5 cm.
- Ants account in around a quarter of animal biomass in some areas. Moreover, there are 7 billion humans on Earth. However there are 10 quadrillion ants, they are 10,000,000,000,000,000. That’s really a lot.
- Ants have a major effect in ecosystems worldwide and their roles are diverse.
While some ants are considered pests, others act as biological control agents. Ants benefit ecosystems by dispersing seeds, pollinating plants and improving the quality of the soil. Ants might also benefit our health, as a vital source of new medicines such as antibiotics.
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- Asian Needle Ants: This ant is almost around 5 millimetres long and is black-brown in colour with dark mandibles. These are also less aggressive than other types of ants are found mostly in Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.`
- Dark Rover Ants: Ranging in the length of around 1.65 millimetres, these ants (as their name suggests) are darker in colour, mostly dark brown. They are mostly found in areas such as Mesopotamia, Flordia, Alabama and South Georgia.
- Carpenter Ant: These ants are most commonly found in the U.S and are about 3.5 – 13 millimetres long. They are black in colour with twelve segmented antennae. These do not sting but can have a painful bite with the spreading of an acidic odour around.
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| Carpenter Ant on a stone |
- Thief Ant: These beings found throughout the U.S are pale yellow in colour and range in height from about 1.3 to 1.5 millimetres. These have a ten segmented antennae and an uneven round body. These may also carry diseases as are known to feed on dead organisms.
Bites and stings of ants can lead to the spread of allergic infections that can prove to be fatal.
The stings in some may involve in pain, swelling and itching. In this way, secondary infections can also result if the bites and stings are not kept clean and detoxified.
We hope that your queries would have been answered. For more interesting articles, refer below:
