Ants - The most Advanced Society Among Animals.

 The ANTS ~Advanced Societies

Ants, who are honeybee cousins, are workaholics because they are constantly working. Because they are workaholics and have a never-say-die attitude, they make superb foragers who labor nonstop, it seems.

Social Structure

The social structure of ants is the most advanced, second only to that of humans, and there is no sign of internal strife. A colony could consist of a few hundred to over 500,000 people. The nests, which go by the name Formicaria, are constructed in a variety of ways. They are united by their extreme devotion to duty and shared belief that "work is worship."

They exhibit polytheism, which means that castes are specialized to do specialized tasks in the colony, just like honeybees do. For instance, the workers have broad, sharp mandibles for cutting and chewing, the queen has a huge abdomen to produce many eggs (2–3 million in a year), males fertilize her, and the soldiers have a massive head with sharp, dagger-like mandibles for fighting.

Female warriors and workers are sterile. The Colobopsis etiolata, or door-keeping ant, has soldiers with enormous heads that they employ to block the entrance to the nest. Being incredibly strong, they can easily lift 20 times their own weight.

Communication

Ants communicate using a highly complex chemical language despite having weak vision and hearing. They have glands that secrete pheromones, which are chemical language transmitters that one of their antennae or feelers on the head can detect. Tropholaxis is the process through which members of a colony continuously exchange food, glandular fluids, and enzymes while nuzzling, licking, and caring for one another.

The scouts' chemical trail and the subsequent foragers' constant body contact guide the path of migrating ant columns. They may sometimes be destined to follow one other's chemical trails in circular motion at an eccentrically high speed if their chemical trace is washed away by rain.

Nest Building

The majority of species excavate homes in the ground or in wood, however other species, like safari ants, do not create any nests at all. Instead, they make suspended nests on trees out of dirt, cardboard, wasps' nests, or silk. Desert ants create crater-like nests or mounds in which they can maintain temperatures that are significantly lower than the heat outside. Even body parts or dead insects are used to embellish the nests, in addition to pebbles, twigs, and pine needles.

Some species employ stones to block the entrance prior to a storm or rain. The overly expanded heads of the soldiers of doorkeeper ants (Colobopsis etiolata) are employed to block the entrance to the nest in order to keep out predators. However, colony employees are only permitted in after giving the doorkeeper soldier a little tap on the head. The Oecophylla tropical ant constructs its nest by weaving silken thread made by its larvae through the leaves. Some workers grasp the larvae in their mandibles and use them to spin web to tie the leaves together while others keep the leaves tightly together.

Foraging and Storage

The great majority of ants consume a variety of foods, including fungi, seeds, insects, and small mammals. At any given time, more than 75% of employees are outside collecting food. Scouts are dispatched to hunt in a path that is generally straight. Chemical language is used to communicate the facts to the other employees. They leave a pheromone trail that other workers can follow from the food source to the nest. For the lean season, they keep extra food in granaries, which are unique rooms. To inhibit germination while being stored, wet seeds are first spread out in the sun to dry. The radical of each seed is then delicately nipped off. The queen brood and other members of the nest receive liquid food that is carried in by the stomach and regurgitated there.

The Australian honey pot ants (Myrmecocystus hortideorum and Camponotus inflatus), often known as honey barrel ants, have some members that have been particularly adapted to store honey. Nearly all ants store food for the lean months. They have sac-like bodies and modified hooks on their appendages. They dangle from the ceiling, store honey in their vast abdomen, and appear to have no other use. Repletes are the name of these casts, which were created specifically to hold honey that foragers had taken from bee hives. When repletes consume honey, their abdomens expand like balloons, rendering them immobile. When the community requests it, these live storage tanks that hang from the ceiling will regurgitate honey.

Swarming and Hunting

The mythical Safari ants or Driver ants of Africa and South America, which are members of the Dorylidae family and were first identified by David Livingston in 1853, are among the primitive kinds of ants that hunt. They are vicious ants with sharp mandibles that resemble sickles and can be used as scissors as well as a weak stinger. They move in massive columns that are nearly half a kilometer long and have a density of 13 ants per square centimeter. Fear pervades the entire area as they walk through the forest, searching every tree, limb, and rock. They attack every animal in their path, coating their bodies in millions of scales of flesh and taking portions of flesh, leaving their skeleton behind in minutes. Sharp jaws and sheer numbers obliterate even larger species like monkeys, pythons, and deer.

Ant Dairies

Due to their enjoyment of their sweet secretion known as "honey dew," dairy ants like Camponotus compressus domesticate aphids known as "Ant cows." They maintain them in their nests, take them outside during the day to graze, and guard them against predators. The aphid is stroked with the antennae to induce it to eject a drip of honeydew, which the ants eagerly capture, and this is how milking is done. The common yellow ant stores the eggs of these aphids that are hibernating in their nests and guards them all winter long with extraordinary foresight. Spring eggs are removed from the nest and put on their host plants so they can hatch. Some types of ant nest chambers are home to domesticated root-feeding aphids, which travel through the ant nests sucking the sap from plant roots and producing food.

Farming

To provide a consistent and reliable source of food, leaf-cutter ants, fungus-grower ants, and gardening ants have developed sophisticated agricultural techniques. The ant known as the "leaf cutter" (Atta) chops up leaves and brings them inside their nests where they act as compost and support fungus gardens. Outside of their nests, farmer ants (Holcomermyx) grow the finest grasses on prepared, fertilized fields. Pests are kept out of these crops, they are weeded and harvested, and their seeds are saved for the following season.

Wars and Slavery

The infamous entomologists A.D. Imms and E.O. Wilson's blood red slave-making ant, Formica sanguinea, appears to have specialized in fighting wars and creating slaves from other ant species, including Formica subsericea. Formica sanguinea and Formica subintegra, two South American species, plan invasions on other colonies to plunder them of their food supplies.

Based on the data their spies gather, planning a raid takes a number of days. A surprise factor is usually added to the attack by thoroughly inspecting the victim's colony and attacking from numerous angles. Dufour glands emit propaganda pheromones to mislead and demoralize the adversary. The granaries of the attacked colony are looted and they are largely defeated. The tiny larvae are brought to the nest so they can grow into slaves and be exploited to do menial domestic chores, while the adults are typically slaughtered.

Close examination of ants reveals a highly evolved social structure and some of their behavior's are incredibly intelligent, like our own. Their community never experiences conflict despite having a clearly defined caste structure; this may be because everyone has a strong sense of duty.

Share this post