Strange things about the ant world

The 'mighty ant' species captures the black ants to raise them as slaves. They help build nests, find food, feed 'young', clean up, feed their owners, and even kill others to steal new slaves for their owners.

Strange things startle you about ants

With about 10,000 billion people , ants are everywhere, except for ice peaks at the two poles. Thanks to a complex and organized 'social' apparatus, wherever it is, deep in the earth or on the high mountains, they live like a leader of insects. Moreover, the 'intelligence' , the synergy and solidarity helped this tiny creature survive over 140 billion years on earth.

Ants grow mushrooms

Ant species are generally living and nomadic species. But in the tropical jungles of Guatemala or Brazil, there is an ant species named Cheye (leaf-cutting ant) ​​that settled and cultivated as a livelihood. At night, this species of ants marched into the dense greenery. Healthy young males are at the forefront, responsible for cutting off the leaves. The ' middle-aged' shreds the cut leaves into a circle or semi-circle, leaving the weaker ones to transport them to the nest.

In the team, technical ants (specialized in cultivating 'technology') quickly crush the leaves for crumbling, co-producing saliva to mix well. Then they were implanted and the mushroom hyphae kept. Soon afterwards, there were white mushrooms on the pile of debris. The 'mushroom-growing engineers ' also know how to control the fungus from spreading, just as big as an apple, they bite off, sharing it with the whole herd.

Surprisingly, they also know how to fertilize, harvest, bite off inedible fungi, pick up high yielding mushrooms and store them for breeding in the next season. Strangely, ants understand both 'warm room technique'. Their ' fungus ' can be compared to the artificial mushroom growing room and human culture, there, due to fermentation and decaying leaves, the temperature is always at 25 degrees Celsius and the relative humidity is 56%. .

Rice transplanting ants

In the US and Mexico there is a species called 'agricultural ant ', because they know how to grow rice. On cool days, the whole herd pulls out of the nest, clearing the grass around and sowing a kind of ' ant rice' , which they love to eat, down to the ground while clearing the grass. To sow seeds, they use their teeth and as before to dig holes, then bury the seeds in the soil.

Military ant (Photo: typepad)

When 'rice' has grown, they are weeding, assigning care, taking care very carefully. By the time of the ripe rice crop, they pull both the herd and the harvest, bringing it back to storage. On sunny days, they also bring 'rice ' to dry, probably to prevent rotting.

Breeding 'dairy cows'

There is an ant species that knows how to breed larvae (insect pests of cotton and tobacco plants) to get milk, just like human milk cows. In the cave, they also make stables for "cows ." In the warm spring, pastoral ants crawl out of the cave, putting up dense canopy trees to care for. embellished into moats on tree branches.

By the time of milk collection, each ' cow' is given one drop per second, 25 mg per day. If more milk is not eaten, they immediately call the worker ants. These workers always have the spirit of ' death for food' . They drank a full stomach of milk, so much so that they could no longer move, clinging to the crossbar in the cave, dying and becoming a milk storage bag for the bronze ant.

At the same time, due to each other's fight for ' milch cow ', in the middle of the flood, a battle drama was born. Such wars are often very devastating, implying a "mountain".

Ants build bridges

Some ants in tropical forests in Latin America have their own 'engineering units ', working very effectively. To facilitate the worker ants transporting food to the nest, ants Eciton burchellii used its own body to cross the bridge across the 'potholes ', 'buffalo ' containing water.

Researchers Scott Powell and Nigel Franks of Bristol University (UK) used punched boards with different diameters to test the behavior of this ant species. They noted that the size of the bridging ant is equivalent to the size of the hole. The holes have a large diameter, there will be many animals combined to form a bridge. They only return to the nest when the whole herd has crossed the 'river'.

Ants also have 'umin'

There is a brave and good-looking 'brave ant' . Their upper jaws are sharp like a needle, a sharp weapon at war. But this weapon makes them unable to feed themselves, there must be another ant species, called 'ant ants' , to feed.

The slave ants were taken from the black ant larvae and raised. They help the brave ants build their nests, feed, feed 'little children', clean up trash and feed their owners, and even help the master break into the black ants to kill their clan and steal new slaves.

The slave ant is busy all day, eating often lacks, so it only lasts about 2 months. However, brave ants never rob big ants as slaves. Researchers believe that it is because of the brave ants that prevent large ants from knowing how to escape, sometimes even knowing it against the owner. This slow-eater only stole larvae because they were too young to know that he was robbed and thought the boss was his favorite, leading to absolute loyalty.

Federal ant

In the former Soviet Union there was a fairly famous ant federation, made up of about 1,500 ants . On average, each nest is 1.5 m high, 7m in diameter, looks like a mound, even as a small hill.

This ant species is big, belonging to the golden ant family. For every 3-4 groups into a 'state ', between the states there are separate corridors. In forested areas, there is no 'foothold ' for insect pests.

The former Soviet state protected these forests very strictly, considering the federal territory as a forbidden area, vehicles were not allowed to enter those areas.