Top 10 Scientific Facts About Ants
Ants are the most social creatures on our planet. They form and live in incredibly huge communities that we call anthills. Each member of the anthill performs only a specific task for him and is ready to sacrifice himself at any time for the sake of the survival of the entire colony. Ants are the only living creatures on Earth, apart from humans, engaged in the "domestication" of other living individuals (for ants, these are aphids). Many serious scientists have engaged in research into the life of ants for the simple reason that ants are one of the most ancient living things on our planet. At the end of the last century, scientists myrmecologists proved that ants are direct descendants of wasps that lived on Earth in the middle of the Cretaceous period, between 110 - 130 million years ago. Today, at Maggner.com, we have prepared many exciting and unique scientific facts about ants and their incredible life for you. Follow these amazing facts about ants in this article.
10: There are an incredible amount of ants on the ground
One of the interesting facts about ants, Based on the calculations of the most famous myrmecologist Edward Wilson, up to 10 quadrillion ant individuals live on our planet. This incredibly massive number of ants is so large that there are about a million insects for every living person. The total mass of all ants on Earth is approximately equal to the whole group of all humans.
9: Ants are the most advanced creatures in terms of evolution
In terms of their social and social structure, ants are the most evolutionarily advanced family of living things on Earth, not including humans. Ants form complexly organized families, consisting of a dozen castes with a clear division of labour. This social structure allows ants to coordinate their actions in performing any tasks.
8: Ants have their own judicial and medical system
The ant community has its own "judicial system." For example, if a healthy ant, which must search for and prepare food, returns to the anthill several times in a row with nothing, then he is "punished." The ants' soldiers kill the worker ant and let it go to the forage. But ants that have lost the ability to work act entirely differently. They are fed while the incapacitated ants can beg for food, to tap their antennae on certain parts of the healthy head.
7: Ants never eat without permission
Ants spend most of their time looking for food and preparation for "tough times." Outside of the nest, ants never eat. Ants bring all of the food to their house, and the queen of ants distributes it solely in the anthill, where she decides who gets how much and what kind of food.
6: Every ant has a natural GPS
Ants never go out on their own. If an ant becomes disoriented owing to circumstances, it will always find its way back to its anthill. Scientists have recently discovered that ants can navigate space using pheromone traces and the location of the Earth's magnetic field.
5: Ants object contains complex control systems
Ants have specific senses in their bodies that respond to even minor changes in natural indicators such as atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, and so on. Ants can reliably predict seasonal weather changes and atmospheric phenomena due to this.
4: ants in agriculture
Ants are the only ones who are engaged not only in conscious animal husbandry but also in crop production on an equal basis with humans. In particular areas of the anthill, there are absolute beds. These beds are fertilized and sown, and then mushrooms are grown on them, which provide the ants with protein food.
3: Ants are more intelligent than humans
Ants are, without a doubt, the most intellectual organisms on the planet. The density of neurons per cubic unit of the brain is highest in ants. There are around 250,000 brain cells in the tiny ant head. Ants would have long since conquered the entire Galaxy if they could merge their "mental power" into one whole.
2: Ants live in the age of advanced slavery
Slavery is a human fault that ants have. Slave ants plunder and attack neighbouring ant nests, bringing pupa ants to their anthill. "Slaves" are produced from these pupae and will perform the same task for the "slave owners" as they would in their native anthill in the future.
1: Pension or special status
Scientists have not studied that some ants are not engaged in anything in the anthill until now. Moreover, unoccupied ants never start working, even if the number of working ants has sharply decreased. Some theories say that these ants have reached old age and are in a seniority pension. Other scientists argue that this is a particular caste of ants, distinguished by special services to the entire colony.