In an ant's world

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.