32 interesting facts about ant

We all have seen tiny ants, they are spotted in abundance around us in our houses, walking on the ground, climbing the tree, climbing the wall of the house, walking in a straight line. A lot can be learned from their discipline and hard work. After all, how are they able to carry so much weight on their body? How do they walk in a straight line? Do they sleep? To answer these many questions, we have listed a long list of facts about ants. So let's read, some interesting and informative facts about ants:

• According to research by Harvard University, ants have been living on this earth since the time of dinosaurs. They have been present on Earth for 130 million years.

• Ants are social animals which means they live in large colonies or groups. Depending on the species, ant colonies can contain millions of ants.

• There are three types of ants in a colony, the queen ant, the female worker ants, and the male ants. The queen and the male ants have wings, while the worker ants have no wings. Only the queen ant lays eggs in the colony. The male ant has only one job, to mate with the future queen. During mating sex, the male's genitalia breaks into the genital of the future queen, causing the death of the male ant just after mating. Once the queen grows up, she lays eggs for the rest of her life. An ant colony may have one or more queen ants, depending on the species. The ant which is the future queen is called a princess ant.

• The queen ant has mating only once in her life and during this mating she collects so much sperm inside her that she keeps on laying eggs for the rest of her life.

• If the ant's egg is fertilized, the female ant is formed from the egg and if the egg is not fertilized, a male ant emerges from it.

• After mating with female ants, the wings of the queen ant break off and then the queen goes to the nest. After that, until the queen lays her eggs, she does not eat anything for several weeks. She uses the energy from her own body fat to feed the eggs. From the stock of sperms deposited in her body from the mating a few days ago, the queen continues to lay eggs for the rest of her life. After this the queen never meets again.

• When the queen dies, the colony can only live for a few months. No other ant can take the place of the queen because the princess ant goes out to build a new colony as soon as she grows up. The worker ants cannot reproduce, so new offspring cannot be given birth. If a princess ant is present in that colony, then after the death of the queen, she is made queen. To become a queen, there is a condition that the parents of that princess ant should be from the same colony.

• Ant colonies also have some army ants whose job is to provide protection to the queen, protect the colony from other ants, and attack the enemy colony in search of space and food. If these military ants defeat the ants of another colony, then they bring their eggs to their colony. Then when the ants emerge from those eggs, they are enslaved. These slave ants are used to take care of the eggs and young of that colony, collect food for the colony and build mounds of the colony. Those military ants do not live in the nest, they are always outside the nest.

• One particular species of ant, Polyergus lucidus, is notorious for enslaving other ants. These ants attack their neighboring colony and enslave the ants living in it and force them to work for themselves. This process is called Slave Raiding.

• Ants from two different colonies consider each other as their enemies, even if they are of the same species. Ants of one colony kill ants of another colony in groups. An ant grabs an enemy's leg or antennae with its mouth and fellow ants grab it and tear it apart. After conquering the colonies, the ants take away the food and their young to their colony.

• All the ants we see are all females. Males look quite different from females and have wings that allow them to fly. Male ants are seen flying only in the summer and rainy season, because this is the right time for ants to mate. Male ants do not participate in any work in the colony, their job is only to mate with the queen ant. The queen and the male ant mate only while flying. The male dies immediately after mating. Perhaps that is why a proverb has been made that when ant’s wings come out, they are about to die. This saying is also somewhat wrong because the male ant always has wings.

• There are ants everywhere in the world. Only Antarctica and some islands are the only places where ants are not found.

• The largest ant colony ever found has been found to be 3500 miles long. This colony belonged to the Argentine ant, which was named Super Colony.

• Ants have a life span of 1 to 3 years, while male ants live only a few weeks. But the life span of queen ant is longer. Some queen ants can live up to 30 years and during that time they lay millions of eggs.

• When ants fight, their fight lasts until one of them dies.

• Like humans, ants do not have lungs in their body, they breathe through small holes found throughout their body and exhale through those holes only. These holes are called spirals.

• Ants do not have ears, they listen by feeling the vibrations in the ground with the help of their feet. While searching for food, ants also feel vibrations from their antennae and hairs on their bodies.

• Most ants have very poor eyesight. Some species have developed communication using their antennae so advanced that they do not need eyes at all. Some species of ants also use the Earth's magnetic field to find their path.

Why do ants always walk in a straight line?

• One special thing about ants while walking is that they always walk in a row. The reason for this is pheromone chemical. When the ants move, they keep releasing this chemical and the ant behind them follows this chemical trails. In this way they form a queue. If you ever break their queue by placing some stuff in the middle, you will see that their queue breaks.

How do ants carry so much weight?

• Ants are very powerful and strong. They can lift 10 to 50 times their body weight. How much weight they can lift also depends on their species. Weaver ants found in Asia can even lift 100 times their own weight. These ants are called weaver ants because of the skill of making their nests, they mostly live on the trees and make their nest on the tree itself.

One thing definitely comes to mind that why are ants so strong? According to a report by Arizona State University, their strength is due to their small body. Due to the small body, the cross sectional area of ​​their muscles is more with respect to the body. Whereas in large bodied animals it is very less. Talking in the simple term, there are many muscles in their small body. Due to the presence of more muscles, they can exert more force and lift more weight.

• A male ant is necessary in an ant colony to produce offspring, but there are some ants in the Amazon jungle that do not adopt the traditional method of reproduction to produce children. They clone themselves to have children. Their queen ant copies herself in her own body and makes daughters like herself, in this way no male ant is needed in that colony and their lineage also continues.

• Why do ants have two stomachs? Ants have two stomachs, it is not because they work more, they eat more. In fact, in one of their stomachs they keep the food eaten for their body, while in the other stomach they keep food to give to other ants. This process is called trophallaxis. Due to this process, the work goes on non-stop in their colony and many ants keep on protecting their queen and nest while living outside.

• It is believed that ants always work and never sleep. It's not like this. Research done on ants has shown that ants sleep 253 times in a day, and their sleep is for 1.1 minutes. Overall, an ant sleeps for 4.8 hours in a day. But the sleeping time of the queen ant is totally different. Queen ant sleeps 92 times in a day and her one nap takes 6 minutes. In total, the queen ant sleeps for 9.4 hours in a day. Some ants work during the day and sleep at night while some work at night and complete their sleep during the day.

• According to a report, it has been estimated that only ants account for 25% of the total weight of all the animals on the earth. According to this, there are about one million ants for one a human on earth.

• Each colony of ants has its own distinct smell. If an ant from another colony comes into it, it is immediately detected by smell.

• Ants roam around their nest in search of food, when they find a source of food, they return to their nest without taking that food. They remember the place of the source of that food in some way and when they return to their home from that place, they release a chemical pheromone from their body, so that the rest of the ants can know that place where food has been found. When other ants come in contact with this chemical, they also come to know that food is available at some place. They chase that pheromone and reach that place and carrying the food directly to the nest, chasing the same chemical. After keeping food in the nest, they return to the same place again and take the food and reach the nest. Similarly, other ants also join that line and in the end all the food reaches their nest. After all the food reaches the nest, these ants again start looking for a new source of food.

• You must have seen humans becoming zombies in movies till now, but zombies are really there in ants. Actually it is due to a kind of fungus in the ants. When any ant becomes infected with this fungus, then this fungus gradually takes control over the nervous system of the ant and in 3 to 9 days. It takes full control over the behavior and operation of the ant. Then the ant does everything at the behest of the fungus that the fungus wants ant to do. A few days later the ant dies and the fungus again looks for its new prey. Although other ants come to know about the disease, they kill that ant in starting phase of symptoms.

• The bite of a particular type of ant causes such pain as if there is a bullet in that place, this ant is called “bullet ant” for this reason.

• The pain caused by ant bites is due to formic acid. But do you know that the speed of the bite of ants is very fast. You will not believe that Trap Jaw Ant bites at a speed of 140 kilometers per hour. That is, the speed of closing its jaws is so high.

• The carpenter ant sacrifices herself to save her fellow ants. Whenever other ants attack their nest and they think that now we are defeated, some ants burst themselves by shrinking their stomach. When their abdomen bursts, their glands secrete a yellowish sticky poison which has a very pungent smell. This puts fear in the mood of the enemy ants. They are called carpenter ants because they make their nest in wood. Their jaws are so strong that they chew wood and spit.