The ants

 The ants

Ants are a family of social insects that fall under the family of membranes of the membranes of the wings, which is the same as that of both wasps and bees. More than 12,500 species have been categorized out of a total of approximately 22,000, and are easily recognizable by their swivel sensing horns and the distinctive semi-node composition that forms their thin waist.

Ants form colonies consisting of dozens of predators living in small natural cavities in highly organized colonies that may occupy vast swathes of land, and are composed of millions of individuals. The large colonies are mostly composed of non-winged sterile females that form a "working class" and "soldiers" In all ant colonies, sometimes there are some males for vaccination and there are also one or more females who are ready to be vaccinated, called the queen, and colonies are described as supernatural because ants function as a unified entity, collectively to support the colony.


Ants have colonized almost all parts of the earth, except Antarctica and some remote or uninhabited islands. Ants thrive in most ecosystems and can form 15-25% of the biomass of wildlife. Their success in multiple environments is due to their social organization and habitat modification. The length of their common development with other species has led to disguise, cohabitation, intrusion, and barter relationships.

Ant form

The shape of an ant is an ant length from 2 mm up to 25 mm. The ant has a large head in relation to its body size, has an oval belly and a small waist. Her jaws can carry very heavy things for her, and she also uses them to dig. It has two other jaws inside to chew food on, and two antennas you use to sense things - to taste and smell.

Ant head

The ant's head contains a complex brain through which the ant can think and make the necessary calculations. It also triggers an alarm when attacked. The ant's head has six legs and two sensor horns, or two antennas,An ant's head contains many sensory organs. Like most insects, ants have compound eyes made from numerous tiny lenses attached together. Ant eyes are good for acute movement detection, but do not offer a high resolution image. They also have three small ocelli (simple eyes) on the top of the head that detect light levels and polarization.most ants have poor-to-mediocre eyesight and a few subterranean species are completely blind. However, some ants, such as Australia's bulldog ant, have excellent vision and are capable of discriminating the distance and size of objects moving nearly a metre away.

The satellite "ants" devices (Horn sensor)

Two antennae ("feelers") are attached to the head; these organs detect chemicals, air currents, and vibrations; they also are used to transmit and receive signals through touch. The head has two strong jaws, the mandibles, used to carry food, manipulate objects, construct nests, and for defence. In some species, a small pocket (infrabuccal chamber) inside the mouth stores food, so it may be passed to other ants or their larvae.

Ant colonies

Ants live all over the world except in frozen areas, and ants live in huge colonies that they themselves dig in the topsoil layers. Some species may extend to the inner layers and cover large areas of the earth. The ants live in very large numbers and work in harmony System with each other, so that everyone knows his job accurately and seeks to do it to the fullest without laziness or coercion to do so, and live in the colony a few queens whose job is to lay eggs in large numbers for reproduction, sterile ants and working ants Who help in Dig the colony and look for food throughout the summer, a large number of males to pollinate the eggs, in addition to the soldiers guarding the colony all the time.
Ants form colonies consisting of dozens of individuals living in small natural cavities in highly organized colonies that may occupy vast swathes of land, and are made up of millions of individuals.They live in colonies and one class within the colony is the worker/gatherer/forager. Workers make up approximately 10% of the colony and it’s their job to go out, find and collect food then bring it back to feed the rest of the colony.They are mainly looking for two things: food and water. If it’s getting cold outside, they also like to settle in to find shelter. In some ant colonies, there are sometimes some males for vaccination, and there are also one or more females who are ready to be vaccinated, called the queen.

Do Ants have Bones?

Ants don’t have bones. Like other insects, an ant wears its skeleton on the outside, so it is called an exoskeleton. And it really isn’t made of bone but of a stuff called chitin.The ant is very soft on the inside. So the exoskeleton of an ant is like armour that protects all the mushy soft internal body parts. The exoskeleton is made up of chitin which is a very strong substance. Some parts of the exoskeleton extend to the inside of the body so that the tiny muscles can attach to the body parts inside. Like the ant’s head is attached to the chest part with the help of the exoskeleton. This is known as the tentorium and it somewhat functions like a bone.

Ants are also formed from larvae but once they grow up and become adult ants they do not change their forms. The body structure is formed mostly by the skin rather than by the bones.

Ants nests

Ants usually build their nests at a depth of ten meters under the sand or silt, as the temperature there is suitable for him throughout the year, and God has provided the ants with supernatural intelligence used in the maintenance of her house from weeds and leftovers, and arrange the house.                                                                    

The age of the ants

The duration of the ants' life varies according to their function and the purpose of their presence in the colony.The queen's ant life is the longest among the rest of the colony. Their mission is to fertilize the eggs at every turn, and soldiers and workers live relatively longer for their important role in protecting the colony and providing food for the colony.Ant colonies can be long-lived. The queens can live for up to 30 years, and workers live from 1 to 3 years.

Ant food

Ants' food varies according to their species. There are some species that feed on diabetic fluids, such as nectar, sugar produced by aphids and other insects, some on other insects, small animals, and others on seeds or fungi. Drinks from dew drops, ponds, and sometimes only wet food, such as nectar. Many types of ants depend on the food they have kept in their nests, especially the seed-eating ants, and some feed on fungi that grow in the nest, while ants feed The paper cutter is on Fungi that grow on the leaves that have been carried and put them in their homes, it is worth mentioning that the army ants wandering in the forests, tropical environments, to feed on animals that it finds, it is a large-sized ants, and has sharp jaws.

Ants communicate with each other using pheromones, sounds, and touch. The use of pheromones as chemical signals is more developed in ants, such as the red harvester ant, than in other hymenopteran groups. Like other insects, ants perceive smells with their long, thin, and mobile antennae. The paired antennae provide information about the direction and intensity of scents. Since most ants live on the ground, they use the soil surface to leave pheromone trails that may be followed by other ants. In species that forage in groups, a forager that finds food marks a trail on the way back to the colony; this trail is followed by other ants, these ants then reinforce the trail when they head back with food to the colony. When the food source is exhausted, no new trails are marked by returning ants and the scent slowly dissipates. This behaviour helps ants deal with changes in their environment. For instance, when an established path to a food source is blocked by an obstacle, the foragers leave the path to explore new routes. If an ant is successful, it leaves a new trail marking the shortest route on its return. Successful trails are followed by more ants, reinforcing better routes and gradually identifying the best path.

Ants use pheromones for more than just making trails. A crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants from farther away. Several ant species even use "propaganda pheromones" to confuse enemy ants and make them fight among themselves. Pheromones are produced by a wide range of structures including Dufour's glands, poison glands and glands on the hindgut, pygidium, rectum, sternum, and hind tibia.Pheromones also are exchanged, mixed with food, and passed by trophallaxis, transferring information within the colony.This allows other ants to detect what task group (e.g., foraging or nest maintenance) other colony members belong to.In ant species with queen castes, when the dominant queen stops producing a specific pheromone, workers begin to raise new queens in the colony.

Some ants produce sounds by stridulation, using the gaster segments and their mandibles. Sounds may be used to communicate with colony members or with other species.