Top 10 Awesome Things You Didn't Know About Ants
10.
They Can Stitch Up Wounds
Minor wounds are considered just an annoyance, with advanced medicine just a call away.
However, if we are in the middle of the African Savannah, with no first aid kit, and the nearest
help we can get is still days away, fixing that little wound can mean life or death.
Apparently, some tribes, like the Masai Tribe in East Africa, faced the same problem and
found an easy first aid trick on the go -- the army ant's strong pincers.
If a Masai warrior is out in the African bush and suffers a wound that needs stitching,
all he needs to do is look for an Army Ant's nest and pick a few of the biggest ants he
could find and have them bite both sides of the wound then break off the body, leaving
just the head.
The seal created by the makeshift surgical staples can last for days, and can be easily
replaced if needed.
9.
Before God Created Man, He Created Ants First
We all know that we, as a species, are relative newbies in the whole of creation, evolving
a mere five million years ago.
Now, compare that to a living fossil like the ant, who has been around since the Cretaceous
Period, about 110 -- 130 million years ago.
The age gap, and the relative high social evolution of the ants, may mean that only
a fluke roll of the celestial dice made the difference in regards to which species came
first.
8.
They Dispose Of Their Dead
Only a few creatures on Earth treat their dead with some relative deference: humans,
elephants, and shockingly, ants.
They even have undertakers to do it.
When an ant dies inside the nest, they will carry the dead body outside for sanitation's
sake, so that infection or disease cannot spread to the entire colony.
Though any worker ant may carry the body outside, it seems that there is a special ant undertaker
that will usually do the cleaning up.
7.
They Can Clone Themselves
Parthenogenesis is a form of reproduction where there is no need for fertilization,
making the resulting offspring a clone of the mother.
A group of Amazonian ants was found to give birth to clones of themselves, creating a
colony with no males around and somewhat echoing the legend of the fierce Amazons who do not
tolerate male company.
Not to be outdone, the males of the small fire ant, whose queens also practice parthenogenesis
in giving birth to new queens, makes sure that their genetic legacy spreads on by cloning
themselves.
This special trick of the male small fire ant involves eliminating the female genome
in some of the fertilized eggs, making the ant a perfect clone of the father.
This unique reproductive maneuverings of both the female and male small fire ant results
in a nest, composing of ants of the same species, that has the genetic makeup of three completely
different species; the queen clones, the male clones, and the sterile female workers with
mixed genes.
6.
They Teach Their Young
As social insects, ants have a very advanced system going on in their colonies, in order
to insure their survival worker ants are put into groups that does various specialized
jobs like foraging, janitorial services, or caretaker of eggs and baby ants.
What is surprising is that these worker ants are not born with the necessary skills already
pre-programmed in their DNA to do some of these specialized works.
For them to have these skills they do what we humans do, learn it from someone who knows
how things are done.
The teacher ants "teaching style" is called tandem-running where the teacher ant will
teach a younger ant the ropes by running with it.
This kind of teaching, even more surprisingly, involves a two way interaction between teacher
and student; the first in a non-human animal.
And if a student is a slow learner and fails in its "exams" it will be relegated to some
other job that does not require specialized skills.
5.
They Know How Agriculture Works
Among all creatures, we now of only four that are evolved enough to use agriculture as a
means of survival: bark beetles, termites, humans, and ants.
However, between ants and us, it seems they started farming first, having been at it since
50 million years ago.
Before moving out of her birth nest, a young queen must first sneak inside the garden and
take away some fungal pellets.
These pellets will be the "seedlings" that she needs to start her own garden and feed
her brood.
Attine ants do their farming by cultivating fungi, just like humans do in farming crops;
they even use pesticides to combat parasites that affects their "crops."
There are five known systems of agriculture that ants practice, but all ants that practice
agriculture are shown to share some general habits in fungal gardening.
This may suggest that ants are e-mailing their fellow garden buddies for some gardening tips.
4.
They Use Herbicides And Disinfectant
Speaking of pesticides, ants use them, as well as herbicides, in their fungal gardens.
Theirs is far more eco-friendly than ours, however.
The fungal gardens that ants grow are also home to a virulent kind of fungus that kills
the fungal crops.
To prevent this fungal weed from spreading, the ants have a bacteria at their disposal
that they carry around on their cuticles.
This bacteria produces an antibiotic that specifically suppresses the growth of the
fungal weed.
In their nests, they use several substances that inhibit the spread of parasites or weeds.
The wood ants, for example, add solidified conifer resins to their nests while building
them, which hinders the growth of bacteria and fungi.
The lemon ant, which prefers to nest in trees, produces a natural herbicide that kills all
other plant life surrounding their nesting tree, including grown trees.
They do this by injecting leaves with herbicide, and the plants will start to die within hours.
3.
They Raise Livestock
Ants do not only raise crops, but also livestock, which they use for "milking."
The livestock consists of insects (like aphids, mealybugs, and myrmecophilous caterpillars)
that secrete a sweet liquid called honeydew.
The ants keep the predators away from their livestock, and even herd them from one feeding
location to another, just like what we do with cows.
When it is time to collect some honeydew from the livestock, the ants "milk" them, by tapping
them with their antennae.
The ants even bring their precious livestock with them when they migrate to a new area.
Kind of reminds us of frontiersmen bringing their cattle along while in search of greener
pastures.
2.
They Wage Wars
Imagine the scene in the final battle of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: total
carnage wherever you look, with the battle lines blurred out as the warring parties are
jumbled up in the heat of battle, with groups of soldiers clustering together to form a
cohesive front and take out an enemy at a time.
Now imagine, instead of the handsome unsullied face of Legolas and his crew, you get ants
with menacing mandibles and scary big eyes of doom.
The tactics ants use in warfare are eerily similar to human war strategies, and they
even vary their tactics depending on what is at stake.
They can even use "propaganda pheromones" to confuse enemy ants and, make them fight
among themselves.
There are even species of ants, like the amazon ants, that oddly resemble the fabled Spartans
in their way of life.
Namely, they only survive through waging wars to replenish their slaves, and to get more
resources from other colonies.
They even act like medieval knights when in their nests, doing nothing more than demanding
food from their slaves, and burnishing their chittenous armor.
And yes, when we said slavery, we meant it ...
1.
They Practice Slavery
As a whole, ants are known for being hard workers but, just like humans, there are some
rotten apples in their baskets.
There are several species of ants that are dependent for slave labor for survival, and
who will actively wage war against other colonies to steal the pupae and enslave them upon hatching.
The most rotten apple in the basket is a species of ants called Polyergus breviceps, which
interestingly, is endemic in the United States.
This species of ants have lost their ability to take care of their young and even themselves.
They "do not forage for food, feed the young or the queen, or even clean up their own nest."
This kind of behavior would mean certain extinction for most species, but these ants have a super
weapon up their sleeve -- weapons of mass subjugation.
The warrior ants will attack a nest, and release a formic acid against the defenders.
This will trigger panic among their ranks and crumble their defense, making it a breeze
to steal the pupae.
If that is not enough, they have a more formidable weapon -- their queen.
The queen of Polyergus breviceps is capable of releasing pheromones that will reduce the
aggression of the defending ants, making them easy for conquest.
In some instances, when the ants badly need more slaves, the queen will go out with the
warriors to war.
After releasing her pheromones to crush the aggression of the defenders, she will immediately
look for the queen of the overtaken nest and kill her.
When the deed is done, the invader queen will become the new queen of the invaded nest,
and the defenders all bow down to her and address her as "her majesty the queen."
Everything is not lost for the slaves though; every so often they stage rebellions against
their masters, by ripping apart the larvae of those that enslaved them.
This means the slaver ants have less chance of going out and conquering more, as their
numbers are quickly dwindling.
Thus saving other ants from slavery, one baby ant at a time.