Ants Are Amazing
|
|
|
World Almanac for Kids
|
Some 9,500 species of ants have been discovered and named so far. Myrmecologists (scientists who study ants) estimate that there are about 20,000 species in all. Ants have been around for about 100 million years, and are found in just about every type of land environment.
Ants are social insects that live together in large groups, or colonies. Their group home is usually a system of underground tunnels and chambers, with mounds above formed out of the dirt or sand they removed in digging. But some ants are different. Carpenter ants carve tunnels in wood (but don't eat it). In the rain forests of South America, the Aztec ant lives inside trees. Tailor ants from the tropics of Africa use leaves to build their nests. And Army ants don't build at all. They travel in big groups looking for food.
Each ant has a specific job. The queen lays eggs to populate the colony. Workers collect food, feed members of the colony, and enlarge the nest. Soldiers are large workers that defend the colony and sometimes attack ants who are strangers. All these hard-working ants are female. Males have wings to fly to another colony, where they mate with a queen and die soon afterwards.
|
|
|
World Almanac for Kids
|
|
A Leaf-cutter ant
|
Ants are very fond of eating sweet foods, seeds, and other insects. Sweets provide energy for worker ants, and the protein from other insects helps build up the ant's body. The Dalmatie ant actually cooks its food by chewing it into patties and baking them in the sun. Harvester ants collect and store seeds. Leaf-cutter ants grow fungus for food.
Ants communicate by touching each other with their antennae. They show other ants where food is by making a path with a chemical (called a pheromone) that leaves a scent that the ants follow.
- The world's biggest ant colony was discovered in 2002. This supercolony has billions of ants living in millions of nests. It stretches 3,600 miles, all the way from Italy to northwest Spain.
- An ant can lift 50 times its own weight--which is as much of a feat for them as lifting a car would be for you!
- Ants don't have lungs. They breathe through tiny holes in their sides called spiracles.
- Ants display many behaviors similar to ours. For example, worker ants take care of larvae by feeding and washing them.
- No one knows whether ants "sleep" in the way we do. They don't have eyelids, so they can't close their eyes. They do rest, but trying to monitor their brain activity at this time would interfere with it so much that the results wouldn't tell us anything. Ants do look for food only during the day. And in the winter, their breathing and metabolism slows way down.
Animales: Las hormigas son sorprendentes (Spanish Version)