Ant

POPULATION 

Ants are found on every land except Antarctica, Greenland and Iceland.

There are 20 quadrillion ants worldwide, according to a 2022 census.

Black carpenter ant on a leaf. Pexels.

Scientists estimate for every human there are 2.5 million ants on the planet.

The total weight combined of the world's ant population is actually heavier than the weight of the human population.

ANT COLONY

A study showed that 2.6% of ants in a colony are always active. Over 25% are observed to never be working, and 71.9% are inactive half of the time.

Ants identify colony members by odor, which allows them to recognize and kill threats.

Ant queens can take over other colonies by murdering their real queen and bathing in her bodily fluids to avoid detection. 

An ant mega-colony exists across three continents and is thought to contain billions of ants, all of which recognize each other to be from the same colony. The largest part of the colony is thought to stretch for 6,000km (3,700 miles) along the Mediterranean coast, while another in the USA, known as the "Californian large", extends over 900km (560 miles) along the coast of California. 

The biggest ant colony found so far in a single area is on the Ishikari Coast of Hokkaido, the second largest island of Japan: 306,000,000 ants, with 1,080,000 queens in 45,000 interconnected nests over an area of 2.7 square kilometers, (1.04 sq ml)

BEHAVIOR 

When ants find food they lay down a chemical trail so as other ants can find their way from the nest to the food.

Ants communicate by swapping spit.

Ants never get into traffic jams, thanks to receptors that allow them to speed by each other without slowing down or colliding. A

Ants sleep by taking about 250 one minute naps throughout their day. It totals just under five hours of sleep. This allows for 80% of their colony to be awake, working and prepared at any given moment.

An ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.

When an ant gets too drunk, his fellow comrade will carry him back to the nest to sleep off the alcohol.

Ants have designated paramedics that are assigned to rescue their wounded soldiers, carry them back to their nest and help them heal by gently holding the hurt limb in place with their mandibles and front legs while intensely “licking” the wound for up to four minutes.

Ants can carry 10 to 20 times their body weight, and they will work together in small or large groups to move extremely heavy things.

Ants stretch when they wake up in the morning. Worker ants take hundreds of 1-2 minute naps per day, so that they can essentially work around the clock.

Scientists attached stilts to the legs of ants to prove that they return to their nests by counting their steps. The ants with stilts overshot their nest by roughly 50% due to the new length of their steps.

Ants farm and milk insects called aphids. Ants protect the aphids from predators and bring them food, then milk the aphids to produce a sweet substance known as honeydew, which the ants then store and eat.

Wood ants practice chemistry, and will synthesize an antibiotic substance using tree resin and formic acid to protect the health of their colony. It is considered to be the most advanced act of evolutionary pharmacology seen in the animal kingdom.

ANATOMY 

The ant is the animal with the largest brain in proportion to its size.

The jaws of a leaf cutter ant can move 1000 times a second.

An ant has five noses. An ant’s sense of smell is comparable to a dog's.

An ant's heart is a long tube that pumps colorless blood from the head back to the rear and then back up to the head again.

If ants were scaled up to human-sized proportions, they would walk at around 52 miles per hour.

ANT SPECIES 

Scientists discovered an ant species found nowhere else on earth between 63rd and 76th streets in New York City. It has been nicknamed the “ManhattAnt.”

Amazon ants, which are red ants found in the western United States steal the larvae of other ants to keep as slaves. The slave ants build homes for and feed the Amazon ants.

Armadillo ants are a rare genus of ants that inhabit the leaf litter of Neotropical forests in Central and South America, from Mexico to Brazil. They are the only ant species with an antenna socket apparatus sitting upside-down.

The bulldog ant, which is found in coastal regions in Australia, is the most dangerous ant in the world. In attack it uses its sting and jaws simultaneously and has been known to kill adults within 15 minutes.

Bulldog ant by Narendra A, Reid 

Some ant species can survive under water for up to 14 days or longer. They're so small that they need very little oxygen.

Camponotus saundersi, a species of Carpenter ant found in Malaysia and Brunei, can explode as an ultimate act of defense. As a last resort they contract their abs to rupture their internal glands, resulting in a suicidal burst of corrosive, immobilizing glue.

Biologists discovered a new species of ant on Broadway medians between 63rd and 76th streets. They named it ManhattAnt.

REPRODUCTION AND LIFE CYCLE

Male ants do not have fathers because fertilized eggs become females while unfertilized eggs become males.

An Amazonian ant called Mycocepurus smithii reproduces through cloning—no male of the species has ever been found. 

The average life expectancy of an ant is about 90 days, though isolated ants live for just a week,

Queen Ants can live over 30 years, making them one of the longest living insects. 

When the only queen ant dies, so does the entire colony, because no new workers are born.

FUN ANT FACTS 

An ant can survive for up to two days underwater.

 

Ants can sense earthquakes a day in advance either by picking up changing gas emissions or noting tiny changes in the Earth's magnetic field.

Roasted ants, known as "hormiga culona," are a common movie theater snack in Colombia. 

 
Sources Greatfacts.com