Ants

Ants are everything we want to be! They are smart, strong, social, and very successful. They make elaborate structures and engage in psychological warfare. They can communicate with scent and chemical kisses. They work together.

There are thirty five thousand varieties of ants living all over the world, except Greenland and Antartica. They range in size from too small to see with the naked eye to six centimeters. They are red, yellow, brown, and black. Like all insects, ants have a head, thorax, abdomen, and six legs. They have an exoskeleton made of chitin which supports and protects them. They breathe using spiracles, openings into their thorax.

Ants have senses unlike ours. They taste information about the colony and the queen. They smell the trail left by other foragers. They use their segmented antennae to smell and feel their way. They have hairs that sense vibration and movement in the air. Ants have developed these adaptations to be successful at surviving in groups that take socialism to its zenith.

Ants' reproduction begins with a mating flight. Only the queen and male ants have wings. After fertilizing the queen, the males die. They have no other purpose in life. The queen starts tunneling to build a new nest for her eggs. She lays her eggs and waits. She absorbs her wing muscles and uses the nutriants to feed the her larvae when they hatch. They spin coccoons and emerge as worker females which do everything in the colony. The queen's only job from then on is to lay eggs.

The greatest struggle in life is to eat without being eaten. Ants work together to provide food for the colony in various ways. Some ants collect grain and store it in the nest to be shared. Some bring it back, in a sharing stomach, or crop, partially digested into bread. Some herd aphids, collecting sweet liquid they make, and storing it in the ants that have a container in their abdomen. Some ants eat insects, including other ants. There are ants that eat birds, amphibians, and small mammals; packs of thousands of pirhana-like ants taking hundreds of thousands of tiny bites can tear the flesh from a frog in minutes!

Ants protect themselves similarly to other hymenopterans, such as wasps and bees, by inhabiting underground nests or otherwise enclosed spaces. They will sting, bite, or spray a stinky substance if threatened. Many animals prey on ants including praying mantises, pangolins and aye-ayes. These exceptional species are a few of the mammals, amphibians, birds, and insects that eat ants.

Ants can ruin homes, destroy crops and spoil a picnic. They can produce a venom that cures arthritis. They make up ten percent of the earth's biomass. We may not name a god after them, but they are an important part of our world. _