Ants, Little But Mighty
Ants, Little But MightyAnts, Little but Mighty
What is an ant? Ants are insects, they have six legs
and each leg has three joints. Ants legs are very strong.
With it�s little legs it can lift twenty-five time its own body
weight. They have two stomachs. One stomach holds its
food, and the second holds food to be shared with other
ants. The out side of their body is covered with a hard
armor. This is called the exoskeleton. Ants have four
growing stages, the egg, larva, pupa, and the adult. There
are over 100,000 known species of ants. Each ant colony
has at least one or more queens.
The queens job is to lay eggs. How does she start her
colony? Well in the spring all the males and young winged
queens leave there nest and fly high in the air and mate.
The few ant queens that survive this �marriage flight� cast
off there wings and instinctively begin to look for a spot to
start a new ant colony.
After making a nest, the young queen ant seals off the
entrance and begins to lay eggs. Some of the first batch are
eaten by the queen for nourishment. When the surviving
eggs hatch they become like larvae. After a few weeks each
larva spins a cocoon around itself and pupates. In a few
more weeks, adult workers emerge. It is their job to hunt
for food and make the nest bigger.
More workers will develop and the colony gets very
organized. The new workers will completely take over as
caretakers of the eggs, larvae, and pupae. Now the queens
only duty is to lay more and more eggs, thousands of them
in her lifetime. Many wingless workers develop and help to
enlarge the nest into an intricate network of tunnels and
chambers that will eventually house thousands of ants.
When the colony becomes well established, the queen
begins to lay some eggs that develop into queens and
males. It takes a few years before a colony becomes large
enough to send out winged males and young queens to start
new colonies. The cycle will now begin all over again.
Ant nests come in all shapes and sizes. One tropical
species built a nest that extended forty feet below the
surface of the ground. Another species built a nets that
covered an area the size of a tennis court. Ants know the
best time to build a nest, that�s after it rains. The damp soil
is easier to work with. Their are many chambers in an ants
nest. Some rooms are used to store the food. Some are
used for storage of ant eggs. There are rooms for tiered ants
to rest. There are even rooms for socializing! When its
cold, the ant colony moves down to the deepest rooms of
the nest where it is warmer....
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