Ant

Ants are among the most fascinating creatures on earth: They live in large ant colonies and each individual has a very specific task to fulfill.

Characteristics

What do ants look like?

Ants are insects and therefore arthropods. They have armor made of chitin, a very hard substance. They also have six legs and a body that is divided into three sections and consists of a head, chest, and abdomen. A typical feature of the ant is the waist, which is located between the chest and abdomen. Depending on the species, ants can be reddish-brown, black, or yellowish in color. There are two angled feelers on the head, also known as antennae, which serve as orientation.

Worker bees and queens are born from fertilized eggs, while males are born from unfertilized eggs. The fertile females are the young queens. Like the males, they have wings so that they can fly out to mate and mate. When the young queens are mated, they shed their wings. Workers don’t have wings. How big ants get varies greatly. For example, the workers of the large redwood ant that lives in our home grow to be four to seven millimeters long. The queen and the males measure nine to eleven millimeters.

Where do ants live?

Ants are found almost all over the world from the tropics to the Arctic Circle and from the coast and the desert to the high mountains. The well-known large redwood ant lives in Europe, Siberia, and North America. Ants live mainly in forests and meadows. Our large redwood ant can be found in deciduous and coniferous forests.

What types of ants are there?

There are around 10,000 different species of ants worldwide. The best-known groups include the bulldog ants in Australia, which grow up to two centimeters long, the driver ants in the tropics, which go on raids in their thousands, and the knot ants, which have a conspicuous waste. The species that live with us include, for example, the large redwood ant and various meadow ants.

How old do ants get?

Ants live for different lengths of time. Some workers live only a few months, while others can live for one to three years. Queen ants have a longer lifespan: they can live to be 20 years or even longer.

Behavior

How do ants live?

An ant does not exist alone – they always live in groups, forming large colonies and building powerful, sometimes even more than a meter high, anthills in which they live. Such an ant nest consists of underground chambers and passages. The excavated earth is piled up over it. In cool areas – like here – the ants also pile up brushwood and fir or spruce needles to protect the nest and the offspring from the cold.

However, some ant species also gnaw tunnels in tree trunks and build their nests there. An ant colony living together in a colony can consist of up to a million animals; in some species, however, only about a dozen animals live together. In the case of the large redwood ant, 300,000 to 600,000 animals live in one colony.

The division of labor is typical for such an ant colony: Most animals are so-called workers. These sterile, wingless females are responsible for all construction work except for reproduction. Among them, there are special groups, also called castes, which are responsible for certain tasks. Soldiers defend the nest, field service ants bring food, and nurse ants take care of the offspring. These workers can store the food in their stomachs and later either feed it to other ants or use it themselves.

They also carry the pupae to the warmest places in the burrow so that they can develop well. When building the nest and transporting the food, it turns out that ants are very strong: they can carry up to 30 times their body weight. One or more ant queens live in each state. Their only job is to lay eggs and thus provide for offspring.

Ants are also very good at finding their way outside of their nest, even if they move far away from it when searching for food. You can see amazingly well, but above all smell very well. And they can perceive gravity very well and remember exactly how steep a path is. On top of that, like bees, they adjust themselves to the position of the sun.

The most important thing, however, is orientation with scent marks: On their way, the ants release scents from special glands onto the ground and objects along the way. This creates real “scented streets” on which the ants can effortlessly find their way back to the nest.

This scent trail is not only recognized by the ant that created it, but also by her colleagues. For example, the track can show the worker bees the way to a particularly rich source of food. The ants use other scents as a warning: if an ant has spotted a danger, it releases an alarm scent that warns everyone else. Our native ants are completely harmless to humans. They can only become a nuisance when they invade homes.

Friends and foes of the ant

Ants have many enemies: birds such as woodpeckers, but also mammals such as badgers feed on them. And other insects, such as the ant lion, also hunt them: it builds a funnel in the sandy soil in which it catches the ants. Anyone who has ever been bitten by ants while sitting in a meadow or in the forest can feel that ants can also defend themselves: They produce formic acid in special glands, which burns our skin violently.

How do ants reproduce?

There is only one ant that takes care of the offspring: the queen. As long as she is young she has wings. In order to mate with the likewise winged males, she flies out on her nuptial flight and is mated with. Males die shortly after mating. The fertilized queen forms a new colony – usually together with a few workers from the old colony.

The queen sheds her wings, burrows into the ground, and lays eggs. The white larvae hatch after two to six weeks. They are provided with food, pupate after a while and finally, new ants hatch from the pupae (also called ant eggs). Some fertilized eggs can give rise to new queens if they are fed a special jelly.

How do ants hunt?

Ants hunt prey by biting them and injecting the deadly poison, formic acid, into the prey.