Relying on the sense of smell and a huge team

Ants, Formicidae, commonly known as ants and arthropods, belong to the class Hymenoptera of Insecta, mostly black, brown, yellow or red, with smooth bodies or burrs, carved lines and tubercles.

ants generally rely on their sense of smell and huge teams to find food, while small groups of ants go to find food. When ants go out to look for food, they will release a substance called "pheromone" in the process of walking, which is used to mark their walking path. When ants find food, they will leave a smell all the way home, and the ants who find the shortest shortcut from food will come back first. After returning to the ant nest, many companions will be gathered to look for food along the route that left the smell. On the way, the ants will constantly strengthen the smell, and after finding the food, they will work together to move the food back to the nest.

most ants are very hardworking and busy with their daily tasks, but some ants are idle. By studying the anatomical and behavioral information of these lazy ants, it is found that they are not "freeloading" in the ant colony as people expected. They can hold more eggs in their bodies. These results show that lazy ants are not simple old workers who can't work. On the contrary, they may be immature workers. Physical evidence shows that they may be storing food for their companions and their eggs may be used for other ants to eat. When these lazy ants can store food, more labor will be useful, such as defending their nests. It may also replace the dead worker ants foraging.

ants have an extraordinary ability to "graze" aphids for food. Aphids, also called honey bugs, suck the sap of plants and excrete a sticky and transparent sweet liquid-honey dew, which is the "milk juice" that ants love extremely. Ants will guard these aphids from ladybugs or other predators, and from time to time stimulate the abdomen of aphids with tentacles, so that they can continuously secrete "honey dew"-just like herders raising cows. When aphids on a branch multiply too much, ants will carry them to new branches and leaves, just like herders looking for new pastures. Ants sometimes keep the eggs of aphids in the nest. After the young aphids hatch, ants carefully send them to the twigs immediately, just like people lead cows to the grass. On the surface, both ants and aphids benefit from this relationship, but scientists have found that ants secrete a chemical to calm aphids and inhibit the growth of aphid wings, making them quiet and slow, and more obedient to ants' control. In fact, the "cow of ants" aphids have become slaves of ants.