I’ll tell you what’s cool. Ants. Ants are
cool. A large number of ants is referred to as a “colony” for starters, and if
that’s not cool, then call me uncool.
Colonies refer to a group living together,
which consist of original settlers and their descendants and successors, a
community if you will – a community that works together to progress by
providing the right sort of living conditions and defense.
Most ants you tend to see (and probably squash) will be worker ants and they are female ants who don’t reproduce. Would
you believe that there is not a single male worker ant? They just don’t want to
do it, all they want to do is have sex and die. Well, I’m not sure if that’s
what they want to do, but that is their role in the colony. They serve the
queen ants who are bigger than other ants and have wings which get torn off by
her male sex slaves when getting down and dirty.
So while these promiscuous queens spend
their lives mostly inside laying eggs in their nests (although you may see them
outside during mating season) the other more petite, but still strong, female
ants keep the colony alive by taking care of the young, building & cleaning
the nests, and providing food (sounds like my mum).
Worker ants come in different sizes, the
smaller ants which you might see modeling on the front of an ant’s Cosmopolitan
magazine do most of the work I just spoke about, while the larger ants will use
their plus size to fight and defend the colony.
Isn’t it funny how it’s a woman’s ant world
down there and used to be a “man’s world” up here? Hopefully they can get some
“masculinist” petitions going on down there or something. I bet the guys aren’t
even allowed to vote yet.
OK, so I have touched lightly on the sexist
community that exists in the world of ants, but now let’s talk about how cool
their tunneling abilities are. For starters, they don’t use machinery to build
tunnels they use their “mandibles” which are like human hands in the sense that
they are used to hold and carry things, but a little bit more super powered because
they are also used for biting, crushing, cutting, digging, fighting and
hunting.
These mandibles are designed to carry over
20 times the weight of the ant, with their strength coming from their middle.
They move dirt to create tunnels and chambers in the soil and as the colony
grows, so do the size of these astonishing nests. Some types of ants build
their nests around 6 meters below the ground and some nests may be as wide as a
tennis court, with millions of ants living, working and having sex down there.
The poor little things only have a life span of about 45-60 days, but
apparently that is enough to excel in your career, give birth to hundreds of
baby ants or become a master in the bedroom.
The ants detect their way around the
tunnels through their sense of smell. Each ant in the colony is recognised by
its distinct smell, so if a mini me was to wander in their looking for a party,
I’d be killed immediately and possibly eaten.
I certainly don’t do it now, but as a kid I
remember squashing an ant or two if they were brave enough to stroll into
whatever game it was I was playing on the ground outside. I distinctly remember
the horrible smell of my fingers after the fatal squish. I was told once that
that smell was a defense mechanism to warn the other ants that death had caught
up with one of their mates and there would soon be troops sent out after me to
avenge their honour. Of course I wish this story was true, but unfortunately
the truth is a similar, less Game of Thrones like version. While the ants do
release a pungent smell brought on by a number of chemicals building up inside,
it’s used as more of a danger warning for nearby ants to get the hell out of
there. They go into a frantic tiz, trying to find protection for themselves and
their colony, tapping their mandibles together and getting a little feisty with
one another.
That’s about all I know on that, Google it
if you don’t feel satisfied. You’d be surprised about how many people search
for answers on ants. Ant answers.
All in all, ants are impressive little
creatures who some people are fatally allergic to, and I will leave you with
this final fun fact about ants – they are fast for their size. Put into
perspective, if humans could run at the same speed for their size, we would run
as fast as racehorses. So maybe instead of just watching horses race, we might
race ourselves against said horses. That would be good.
