Characteristics of ants
1. Sociality
Ants are social animals, and there is a unique way of communication between ants.
If an ant encounters food that it cannot drag, it will go back along the way it came and call its companions. At this time, if you look carefully, you can find the ant's nest. Soon after the ants get into the nest, several ants will come out and crawl towards the food along the original route. Halfway through the climb, some ants will turn back and meet other ants on the road. They will use their tentacles to talk.
After a while, there will be many ants between the ant nest and the food.
2. Like sweets
The foods that ants like to eat are sweet foods, such as sugar and bread crumbs. When the ant smells the sweetness, it crawls over slowly and first tests the food with its legs to see if it reacts. If there is no reaction, it will eat it and try to drag the food away.
3. Can use smell to identify directions
When ants go out to find food, wipe out a section of the path they crawled with your hands, and then when you find that the ants are trying to find their original path, When encountering the erased section, they become directionless. From this experiment, we can see that ants sometimes leave scents in the places they have crawled, or remember the smell of natural gas along the way, which shows that ants need to know their way. olfactory.
Extended information
Each ant colony will differentiate into queen ants, male ants, worker ants and soldier ants each performing their own duties:
1. Queen ant
Generally, an ant colony has only one female that can lay eggs, which we call the queen. The queen is the largest in the ant colony, especially the abdomen, with well-developed senses, short antennae, and small thorax. , winged, wingless or wingless. The main responsibilities are to lay eggs, reproduce offspring and manage the entire population.
2. Male ants
Male ants, or father ants. The head is round and small, the upper jaw is underdeveloped, and the antennae are slender. The main function is to mate with the queen ant.
3. Worker ants
The queen ant lays eggs, and most of the eggs will develop into females. These female ants will differentiate into worker ants and soldier ants. Worker ants are also called professional ants. Wingless, generally the smallest individual in the group, but the most numerous. Worker ants are non-reproductive and are only responsible for building and defending the nest, collecting food, and caring for the queen, eggs, and young ants. The compound eyes of worker ants are small, and the single eye is very small or absent. The upper jaw, antennae and three pairs of thorax are well developed, and it is good at walking.
4. Soldier ants
"Soldier ants" can also be understood as large worker ants, which are also female ants without reproductive capacity. Soldier ants have large heads and well-developed upper jaws. They often use their jaws to tear or fight with venom to prevent enemies from approaching. Ordinary ants often have venom glands at their tails, and sometimes there are venom glands in their mouths. They will spray poisonous gas at enemy ants, causing them to become confused and weak, and then they will swarm them and bite them to death.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Formicidae