Ants
Who doesn't know ants? Of all the animals around us, ants are the most abundant and most familiar animals. There are about 20,000 species of ants found in the world. Ants live comfortably in every part of the world except in very cold regions. Ants have been living on the earth for about 10 to 150 million years. Many species of animals have come and gone during this period.
A major characteristic of ants is their social structure. Ants, like termites and bees, have a society and its rules are strictly followed so that the social system continues from generation to generation.
Breeding male and female ants are usually born during the rainy season. They have wings and start flying as soon as they leave the bambi.
A female ant is accompanied by several males, of which one or more males mate with the female to enable her to lay eggs. This flight is called matrimonial flight. After this flight the male ants end their lives and they die. The female hides in a burrow or under a stone and starts laying eggs. Since he no longer needs to fly, his wings perish.
Life cycle and division of work
There are four stages in the life cycle of ants – egg, larva, pupa and adult. The female ant takes care of the larval ants that emerge from the initial eggs, but they take over the social system when a sufficient number of young are born and they grow up. These are called worker ants. All these ants are female but they are infertile, that is, they cannot lay eggs. Their life span is 4 to 7 years. Now the original female ant does only the work of laying eggs and sits in one place in the bambi. It is also called queen ant. Worker ants do the work of cleaning his body, bringing him food, etc. Apart from this, the main tasks of the worker ants are as follows - go outside the bambi to collect food and bring it to the bambi, to grow the bambi as per the requirement according to the increasing population and to clean the bambi, eggs and babies. Taking care of them and giving them food etc.
In these three castes found in the society of ants, i.e. queen, male and worker, we can see only worker ants. The queen stays in the bambi permanently and only does the work of laying eggs. She can live up to 15 years and lays about 70,000 eggs throughout her lifetime. Males have a very short lifespan and die within two weeks after mating flight.
There is a great deal of variation in the size, appearance, food and behavior of different species of ants. You must have seen yourself that the red colored ants are quite aggressive as compared to the black ants and take quick bites. Their venom (formic acid) also causes more irritation. In addition to black and red, ants are also brown and yellow. Ants of one species are more than an inch (two centimeters) in length, while ants of some other species are barely twenty-fifths of an inch, that is, a millimeter long.
Generally three to four species of ants are found in our country. The largest species among them is that which we call ant or macaw. Many people understand that small ant means female, and big ant means male. But as we have seen above, all the ants seen outside Bambi are only infertile females. Actually, both the small ant and the big spider are different species of ants.
keep in touch
Ants interact with each other in two ways. A type of hormone is released from their body which is called pheromone. Ants maintain contact by smelling each other's pheromones. You must have noticed that if the path of the line of ants is wiped with a wet cloth, then the ants coming from behind get confused. This is because the smell of the ants going further is gone. Another way for ants to maintain contact is by touching each other's tentacles, the antennae.
Different species of ants are herbivorous, carnivorous or omnivorous. The behavior of some ants is very interesting. Ants of some species take a particular type of fungus as food and they cultivate this fungus in a systematic way. For this, the leaves of plants are chewed and their pulp is made, and then the seeds of the fungus are sown on this pulp. Ants of some species drink the juice released from the body of one type of insect and they catch these insects and feed them in their bambi in the same way as humans keep cows and buffaloes. Large red colored ants (also called barbuta) living on trees make a nest by sealing the leaves together. The thread used to sew the leaves is also very interesting. It is the silk released from the body of the larvae of these ants. The worker ants make nests by attaching the leaves to the body of these larvae using the needle.
Found in the forests of Africa and South America, army ants move from one place to another in millions of numbers and devour all the creatures that fall in the way. Ants of some species attack the bambi of ants of other species, pick up their larvae and then make them act like slaves.
