1. Will ants get lost?
Ants often come out to look for food, and sometimes they are lucky enough to find it right away; Sometimes it's bad luck Haven't found it for a long time. Will they recognize me when I go back and walk for a long time?
I often erase a section of the road that ants have just climbed by hand, and then I find that when ants are looking for the original road, they become at a loss when they encounter the erased section. This shows that ants will leave a smell where they have climbed, but I read that some ants will not leave a smell, but will remember the natural smell along the way and then find their way home.
In addition, I found that ants are very sensitive in vision. They can use the scenery of land and sky to find their way. Once I blocked a group of ants who were going back to their nests with cardboard, so that they could only see the sky. Therefore, they can still follow the correct route. Later, I used a big board to block the ants from seeing the sky and the surrounding scenery, so I found that they began to lose their direction and crawl at random.
It can be seen that not only the surrounding scenery, the position of the sun, but also the sunlight reflected by the blue sky can help ants identify the direction.
Second, why do ants line up for action?
I noticed that ants are always United in their actions, as if they are all keeping in touch with each other by mobile phones. What magic weapon do they have?
Ants do have ways to contact their companions. Although they are scattered around for food, as long as someone finds food, in addition to quickly taking a small piece back to the nest, they will remember to secrete aromatic signals along the way and urgently inform their companions to come to support. Nearby ants smelling the fragrance will sniff this scent route all the way to find food, and Qi Xin will work together to move all the food back to the nest. These ants moving along the smell form a long line and move forward in an orderly way.
This aromatic substance secreted by ants is called pheromone. Because of its high volatility, after a few minutes, all the food is transported back to the nest, and the fragrance disappears, so as to avoid the arrival of another ant, and the result is empty.
3. Why do ants fight?
In summer, we often see a lot of ants, big and small, crawling around, carrying insect residues and dirt ... Sometimes they meet and bite and kill in groups, and the struggle is very fierce.
Why do ants fight? Some entomologists believe that ants fight for food, so they use the theory of intraspecific struggle to explain it. However, many entomologists believe that this is not an intraspecific struggle, but a chemical forced reaction.
In order to prove this phenomenon, I did the following experiments: put ants in different nests together, and when their antennae touch, they immediately bite and kill them; On the contrary, when ants in the same nest are put together, they not only don't fight or bite, but also feed each other.
Entomologists explained that ants in different nests have a special "nest smell". This "nest smell" is different from nesting materials, stored food and its own secretions. Every ant has the ability to distinguish the smell of its nest. Once other ants are found not to be members of their own family, they will fight with each other and gradually form a "war". Interestingly, the ants that were killing were washed away with water and put together. After meeting, they left safely. If you sprinkle some spices on an ant, it can't go back to its nest, and the ants in the same nest will mistakenly think that it is an enemy and be driven out.
Others believe that killing ants in groups is directly related to the size of the group. Especially when different groups of ants meet together, it will immediately cause a fight. When a single ant meets, there is less chance of fighting.
More interestingly, there is a strict hierarchy among members of the ant family.
All ants live in social groups. Generally speaking, there are four different kinds of ants in a group.
1, Queen Ants: Female ants with reproductive ability, or female ants, are the largest in the colony, especially with large abdomen, developed reproductive organs, short antennae, small chest and feet, wings, wings or no wings. The main responsibility is to lay eggs, breed offspring and manage this big family.
2. Male ant: or father ant. Small head, undeveloped upper jaw and slender tentacles. It has developed reproductive organs and external genitalia, and its main function is to mate with the queen ant.
3. Worker ants: capable ants. Wingless, generally the smallest individual in the group, but the largest number. The compound eye is very small, and the monocle is very small or not. The maxilla, antennae and three pairs of pectoral feet are well developed and good at walking. Worker ants are infertile females The main duties of worker ants are to build and expand nests, collect food and feed young ants and queens.
4. Soldier ant: It has a big head and a well-developed upper jaw, and can crush hard food, thus becoming a fighting weapon when defending groups.
I didn't expect such a small ant to have so many secrets. I am more and more interested in them. I searched a lot of information about ants on the Internet and found that ants are small animals of Hymenoptera Formicidae. At present, there are about 260 genera and16,000 species of ants in the world, and there are more than 2,000 species in China. According to Edward, a world-class authority on ant science and a professor of entomology and ecology at Harvard University in the United States? According to Wilson's statistics, there are more than 8,000 species of named ants in the world, of which more than 600 species are in China. According to the late British ecologist C? b？ Professor Williams estimates that the total weight of ants on the earth accounts for about 10% of the total land animals.