Facts About Ants

Ants can be considered the most common species among the insects. Ants have been living on earth for about 100 million years. There are more than 12000 species of ants.

Ants live in colonies that could reach up to millions of ants. The ant colony contains one winged queen or several winged queens according to the size of the colony, along with several fertile males and thousands of female workers and soldiers. There are colonies of ants all over the world except for Antarctica, and few uninhabited islands.

When ant workers find food they leave a secreted chemical called pheromone so they would know the way back.

Ants communicate with each other using chemicals. The ant that feels danger produces chemical signals (pheromone) in order to warn the other ants and it also use the chemicals to lead them to food. Ants feel the sounds by the earth vibration and they don’t hear as they don’t have ears.

Ants can eat everything and anything starting from fungus, through insects till they reach meat. As they are considered scavengers and herbivores, they can even described as predators.

Ants can carry objects that can reach up to twenty times its weight.

Ants have three pairs of legs with three joints each. The legs are so strong which enable the ant to run very fast, as fast as a race horse comparing to human when considering the weight of the human and ant.

The ants respire through her body where they have tiny holes that the oxygen get through and carbon dioxide leave through.

In most cases when the ant queen dies, the hole colony would die after a short period as the ant workers are sterile and the only fertile female is the queen.

The jaws of the ant are very powerful, they use to cut the food in order to transfer the pieces to the nest.

The ant own two antennae that it uses in touching, smelling and in fighting.

The Eye of the ant involve many small eyes, so the ant eyes are called compound eyes.