For a long time, scientists knew little about how and how long an ant lives. This allows you to obtain only general information about how their hierarchy is organized, how many legs an ant has, etc. Scientists have long compiled a complete description of this insect. However, artificial farms and modern means for micro-photography made it possible to obtain high-quality photos and find out interesting facts about the life of these creatures. Such recreated communities allowed scientists to understand whether ants sleep, how their work is organized, where they can be found, and what this insect can eat. In other words, the scientific characterization of this biological species has become much more complete than it was just recently.
Despite the widespread belief that all varieties of these insects are predators of the microcosm, this is not entirely true. In fact, people often have no idea what ants do in winter and have no idea about their feeding habits. However, this is not all that scientists learned during the analysis. Interesting facts from the life of these insects were revealed. Only recently have scientists been able to find out how much an ant of a particular caste weighs.
Ants can clone each other.
Amazon ants reproduce through cloning. There are no males in the ant colony, and scientists never found any, but instead they discovered that the entire colony of these ants is made up of clones of the queen.
Ants carefully prepare for the coldest time of the year - winter. The success of surviving harsh weather conditions depends on its quality. Throughout spring, summer and autumn, they expand and deepen their home, stockpile food, and insulate the anthill both outside and inside. An additional top layer of branches and leaves helps retain heat in the nest. During the warm period, hardworking insects repair the anthill and take care of the emergence of new offspring from the larvae.
The benefits and harms of ants
Insects can live in a wide variety of ecological zones, so they often conflict with people. Ants carry aphids, which feed on the sap of various plants and trees, helping to weaken them. Ants can damage agricultural crops, which can lead to the destruction of the entire crop. But there are also benefits from ants. Many people do not even realize the benefits ants bring, but this is very important. These creatures can destroy an incredible number of caterpillars and other insects that harm cultivated plants in a season. The benefits of ants have been fully proven. They cause more than just harm.
How do ants prepare for winter?
To ensure sufficient nutrition and a quiet winter, they perform a large amount of work. First of all, the ants prepare a sufficient amount of food; for this, workers collect caterpillars, beetles, bedbugs and other garden insects that live in their area. A certain part is used to feed the larvae, and the rest is stored in special chambers suitable for wintering. This way they won’t have to leave their “rooms” and let the cold into the anthill. The harvested diet also includes various parts of plants, their fruits and seeds. In addition, they bring live aphids into underground rooms, and the ants happily eat their secretions.
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Preparation is not complete without insulating the home. Working ants build a kind of hill (dome) over their homes, which provides warmth during harsh weather conditions. In red forest ants, such a mound reaches a width of more than 1 meter and a height of 50 cm. This heap contains passages and chambers. The collected loose material prevents the cold from penetrating into the underground rooms. They also prepare compartments for wintering, insulating them and storing food.
Adult insects take care of the future generation. To prevent the larvae from dying, they are transferred to chambers where it is warmer and the microclimate is satisfactory. There the air temperature will practically not fluctuate and drop to critical points.
With the onset of late autumn, little workaholics clog all the exits from their homes. The materials used are earth, clay, dry leaves, etc. In this way they ensure maximum warmth for their home.
If the upper layers freeze, the owners move supplies deeper, where the cold cannot reach and spoil the food.
Every year, before the air temperature drops, they expand their home and strive to make it even deeper.
Anthill structure
An anthill in appearance resembles an ordinary mountain of branches, blades of grass, pieces of earth, but in fact it is a subtly and well-thought-out dwelling, the inside of which is much more interesting than the outside.
The ant house has a cone shape for a reason; thanks to it, the rain rolls down the blades of grass and needles almost without getting inside. The anthill rises above the level of the grass so that the sun's rays penetrate inside, which warm the ants and also warm their larvae and pupae. And the deeper layers of the anthill provide a refuge for insects on cold days. Thanks to a clever design, the ants spend the summer in the summer cone and winter in the earthen passages.
Parts of an ant's home
Looking at the picture, you can see the different parts of the anthill; below is what each of them serves:
- The top covering, consisting of needles, blades of grass and twigs, protects the ant house from weather conditions.
- A chamber heated by the sun's rays - here the ants warm themselves and their offspring.
- One of the many entrances, guarded by soldiers, in addition to serving as a door, also serves as a channel for ventilation.
- Storage area for garbage and dead ants.
- A wintering chamber where ants wait out the cold in a half-asleep state.
- Chamber for storing grains.
- The queen's chamber is where the queen lives and lays eggs, and is tended by worker ants.
- Chamber for eggs and larvae.
- Chamber for aphids.
- Storage room for caterpillars and other “meat” prey.
This is interesting! The largest anthill in the world is located in the Tomsk region near the village of Zavarzino. This conclusion was reached by Tomsk local historians who took measurements of this structure. In order to build such an ant house, the ant family, according to scientists, took at least 20 years. Record parameters are 3 meters high and 5 meters diameter. According to local historians, this anthill is becoming overgrown, but its residents have already started building a new home nearby. It is possible that it will not be inferior in size to the old one.
Where do ants spend the winter?
Insects spend the winter period in the same anthill as the rest of the time. With the onset of cold weather, they move to deeper chambers. The temperature in them is higher than in the upper ones. Usually it is zero degrees. Stable temperatures allow them to overwinter without losses, continuing their measured lifestyle. Pre-sealed passages do not allow cold air to pass through. If the first layer gets wet, the little workers carry food supplies deeper and deeper. In countries with warm winters, during the thaw period they can come to the surface in search of food.
Do ants sleep, die or work in winter?
As the weather gets colder, the colony slows down the pace of its usual existence. Despite this, hard workers do not stop fulfilling their duties. The uterus gives birth to offspring much less often or completely stops breeding them. Larvae that do not have time to transform into adults slow down their development. In winter, workers transfer the queen to a warm chamber and feed her with protein-rich foods. When consuming enough protein, she begins to lay trophic eggs. This type of egg does not give birth to larvae; they act as food for the queen.
In winter, some species enter a state of diapause, characterized by a slowdown in the action of the internal organs of insects. Other species may remain in a fairly vigorous state all winter, but their activity is slightly reduced compared to the warm season. They need less food. If there are larvae left in the anthill, large ants provide them with food. When the soil temperature rises to a positive level, they come out of diapause and are engaged in feeding the young and arranging their home.
Species of ants living in mild climates can come to the surface at above-zero temperatures, continue preparing supplies and breeding new larvae. They navigate by rising temperatures, warming up their home and shortening or increasing daylight hours.
The larvae, living at high altitudes in a state of torpor, can survive two winters and then grow into a large individual.
After workers have blocked all the entrances, a person cannot determine whether the ants are sleeping or not.
How does an ant colony work? Life of ants in an anthill
In order to understand how ants live in an anthill, let's start from birth. Once a year, males and females hatch from the eggs and are ready to reproduce; they have wings and fly away in different directions to mate. Males, after fulfilling their main purpose - fertilization, die, and females fly away in search of a place for a new colony. Having found it, the female bites off her wings in order to obtain additional nutrients and begins to actively lay eggs.
At first, hungry times await her; she survives only due to the accumulated fat layer, but then, when the first representatives of the offspring hatch, they begin to provide her and the larvae with everything they need. The ant mother mates only once, and her supply of sperm is enough for her entire long (up to 20 years) life to reproduce offspring.
These insects belong to the Hymenoptera, male individuals develop from unfertilized eggs and have a single set of chromosomes, and female individuals are endowed with a double set. In this state of affairs, daughters acquire the entire genome from their father, and half from their mother. At the same time, sisters become closer relatives to each other than daughters to their mother. Despite the fact that the word "ant" is masculine, all worker ants are female - daughters of the queen who cannot mate and remain unfertilized throughout their lives.
Ants and their larvae
Ant social strata
Ants, like humans, have social relationships and hierarchies. Everyone has a set of qualities: intelligence, aggressiveness, reaction speed, enterprise, the ability to communicate with others. Depending on which qualities dominate in each, the ant receives a certain profession:
- invader warriors - the main task is to seize new territories and attack other anthills in order to steal larvae and cocoons in order to subsequently turn them into slaves working for the benefit of someone else's anthill;
- builders diligently maintain the structure and condition of the anthill, create new tunnels and communications as the number of residents grows, every day hundreds of builder ants drag needles and twigs from above into the deep layers of the anthill, and from the lower floors to the top. In this way, a stable humidity regime is maintained and that is why the dome of the anthill does not rot or mold;
- orderlies - isolate sick ants from society, if a patient’s limb is damaged, they amputate it, gnawing it off with their powerful jaws;
- nannies-caregivers - take care of the offspring and educate them;
- breadwinners – obtain and store food;
- guards - protect the entrances to the anthill from strangers and ensure the safety of the queen with the larvae;
- shepherds or milkers - ants have their own pets. Aphids eat vegetation and secrete droplets of sweet liquid called honeydew. Mutually beneficial cooperation has been established between insects. Ants tickle aphids and get honeydew - for them it is a delicious and nutritious food, which is the main source of carbohydrates. And as a return service, they graze and protect their milk cows from attacks by predators;
- transporters - carry honeydew to the anthill;
- maternity hospital workers - distribute eggs to specially designated compartments and are responsible for maintaining the required temperature;
- nectar keepers - necessary in an anthill in case there are suddenly times of famine in it, and the foraging ants cannot find food. Then the products that thrifty keepers always have will come in handy;
- scouts - looking for new places where they can get food.
Depending on how many ants are in the anthill, there is a division of labor. In a small ant family, all its members can engage in different types of activities, observing the principle of interchangeability. But in a large community, specializations appear and individual ants are assigned their roles.
Ants, just like people, are not born equal, with different genetic predispositions, and the main task of the community is to effectively use the potential of each family member. So, for example, those who become guards and warriors initially display an aggressive disposition and rush into battle without thinking; they are slightly larger than other relatives and have strong tentacles. The same story is with the intellectual elite of the ant community - the scouts. Smart ants have the ability to remember the sequence of turns along the way to a place with new food and transfer this information to food getters.
The question of the prestige of the profession
At a young age, ants can change their profession and look for themselves in different types of activities; for those who do not decide on a specialization, the role of general workers is destined. No matter how hard they try, newcomers cope with responsibilities worse than their older and more experienced fellow tribesmen. According to scientists, in the world of ants there is such a thing as the prestige of a profession. For example, the ants do not allow the lower caste - slaves - to drag the larvae and even in case of danger, they take them away and carry them themselves. For them it is a matter of prestige! Slaves are assigned the role of builders; apparently, this profession is not valued by ants.
Self-affirmation: “suitcase pose”
In order to secure their place in the sun, insects are forced to show their tough character. They sometimes behave aggressively towards their fellow tribesmen: they jump at each other, rise above the enemy, demonstratively walk on high and tense legs, and bite painfully. The winner in an argument can grab the defeated one and force him to crouch in the “suitcase pose”, then drag him away from the battlefield, can carry him to an anthill and throw him there so that he does not interfere with his career and does not come closer to the winner.
It is amazing that ants live so harmoniously and work as a single mechanism for the benefit of their family, without having one “brain center”. Moreover, the anatomical features of one ant will not allow it to be the sole manager - the capabilities of its nervous system are too small for such a large volume of programs and information that are necessary to manage the life of an entire anthill.
The life of ants in an anthill is unique, very interesting and requires long-term study to understand the new secrets of these tiny but powerful insects.
Why don't ants freeze in winter?
These earthly inhabitants even live in the northern tundra, which is known for its cold air temperatures. In the Kamchatka and polar ants, the passages and “rooms” are located at a depth of 10-30 cm.
Ants living in the temperate zone build a “dome” over their homes to warm their chambers. If an individual rises to the first “floors”, it will immediately feel discomfort and cold and go back down.
They are allowed to survive by special sugary substances secreted by aphids. Sugar accumulates in the body, and then the substances in the body of the ant are converted into glycerol. Thanks to this, they can easily tolerate temperatures down to -50 degrees. Accordingly, they enter diapause. At first glance, the colony, along with the queen and larvae, appear to be dead, because they do not move or eat. The diapause period lasts until the temperature rises.
Beetles move in with them for the winter. The hosts feed on their sweet secretion, and the guests feed on prepared supplies.
Bullet Ant
The name of these ants is due to the fact that when bitten, a very strong pain occurs, which, like a bullet, hits the body. The venom of these ants contains a powerful toxin - poneratoxin. Once a bullet ant bites, the pain lasts for 24 hours, which is why they are also called “24 hour ants.”
They have a very strong sting and poison, which is why they got their name.
On the Schmidt scale, the pain from the bite of this ant reaches the highest level of 4, that is, it exceeds the pain from any other insect bites.
These ants are among the largest on the planet: the body length of the female reaches 3 centimeters, and the working individual reaches 2.5 centimeters.
The stinging force of the “bullet ant” on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index scale corresponds to the highest, 4th, level.
Ants live 24 hours in South America. Some Indian tribes use them to conduct terrible male initiation rituals, during which sleeves with these ants are placed on the boys' hands. After the ceremony, the hands may not move for several days, become insensitive and turn black.
This type of ant is used by local tribes for painful rituals.
