Pangolin quietly, just half squinted at the movement of ants. Except for the queen and a few males, all the ant nests are their nests. When fewer and fewer ants come out of the nest, pangolins will make a proud sound. At the same time, its bright red tongue, which is 35 cm long, can't help but squeeze out of its mouth and swing slightly, and its muscles and scales suddenly tighten, so that the ant will be locked in its deck. Pangolin immerses its whole body in the water, and its scales are closed one by one, and its body swings one by one. As a result, many ants fell into the water, floating on the water and dying, while pangolins stuck out their tongues and swallowed them comfortably.
In addition to pangolins, there are also echidna with more than half of the body-anteaters with a funnel-shaped face. They are also natural enemies of ants and specialize in eating ants. Besides. The aardvark, hedgehog, newt, toad, shooting fish and ant lion are all experts in eating ants. Ants are also good food for some birds. People in some areas have the habit of eating ants. In some parts of France, ants are used to make soy sauce as a seasoning for dishes. Indians in North America put a pinch of salt on a local ant, and it became a very delicious side dish.
People can't help but worry, can these "dwarfs" in the delicate insect world survive in nature?
However, on the contrary, these tiny ants, with their collective strength and special abilities, not only thrive in nature full of various struggles, but also have prosperous families and become insects with survival advantages and footprints all over the world!
At present, there are more than 7000 kinds of ants in the world. Ants have many body colors. In addition to the common black, yellow, brown, red and other ant species, there are also ants with turquoise blue and rosewood color! They are also very different in size. Cattle ants in Queensland and northern New South Wales, Australia, are generally 3.7 cm long and have a pair of huge jaws, which look very imposing. The smallest ant in the world is a thief ant, and its worker ant is only 0.2 cm long.
Ants live an organized social life. Their family members are composed of fertile female ants (queens), worker ants and soldier ants with worker ant varieties. They have a clear division of labor. Each has its own work tasks. For example, the queen only lays eggs; Male ants only mate; Soldier ants only protect the safety of ant colonies and nests; Worker ants are the main "labor" of this family. They are responsible for foraging and transporting food, managing ant nests, feeding young ants, cleaning ant paths and expanding ant rooms. There is also a division of labor between workers and ants, some specialize in "housework" and some specialize in "field work".
Among some ants in Australia, there is an ant that specializes in storing honey. Their crops are particularly developed, and they are full of ant honey. So their bellies swell round and round, just like a ripe berry. People call it honeypot ants. The largest honeypot ant can store 100 worker ants 10 days to 15 days.
Ant, a social insect, is "hardworking", "brave" and "smart". Although their activities are only simple instinctive reactions, these instincts formed by adapting to the environment are amazing.
There is also a bacterial ant in the United States that can "grow food" by itself. In this ant colony, there are worker ants of various shapes. Except the smallest worker ant in charge of logistics and the soldier ant in charge of safety, all the worker ants are usually in their nests. When they find suitable bushes or other suitable trees, they cut the leaves into pieces with their jaws, hold them in their arms, hold them above their heads, and line up to return to their nests. This scene is very similar to the "stream of people" who hold umbrellas for the market, so some people call it umbrella ants or leaf-cutting ants. This huge umbrella ant team is really spectacular. If there is wind, it will be more interesting. Umbrella ants with leaves in their mouths sometimes tumble one after another by the wind, but the leaves in their mouths will never fall off and they can continue on their way after turning over. Strangely, there are also some "speculators" in this "hardworking" ant colony. Sometimes a worker ant is holding a broken leaf. In fact, several idle worker ants are quietly boarding it. At present, the reason for this boarding phenomenon has not been clarified.
When the leaves are sent to the nest, the small worker ants who stay in the nest and are responsible for logistics take on the task of handling the leaves. They chewed the leaves of a large group of worker ants into pieces and used them as a culture medium for mushrooms (a fungus), and then inoculated the leaves with strains. After a period of time, they will grow many fungi. This fungus food is the "food" of the ant family.
There is another way to harvest ants. This ant stores a large number of edible plant seeds in its nest. When the seeds germinate in the next spring, they will move the seeds out of the hole in time and plant them on the land around the ant hole. When it is ready to bear fruit, the harvest begins, hence the name harvest ant.
There are also some ants who can run "animal husbandry". People often see many ants busy in aphids, big and small, on the young leaves or back of plants. It turns out that ants are licking the sweet liquid secreted by the end of aphids. These sweet liquids are like ants' milk, and aphids are like cows domesticated by ants. The shoots, twigs and leaves of those plants have become the natural "pasture" for ants. Therefore, some people call aphids ant cows. Ants take good care of these parents. When aphids are attacked by enemies, ants always try their best to protect their "cows" and often drive away the enemies who eat aphids. When aphids need to move because of the sudden death of their hosts (plants), there will be a large group of soldiers who are good at fighting for them. When the weather is cold, these ants will invite aphids to their nests for the winter and send them back to the plants the next spring.
There is a sewing ant in Africa. This "smart" ant often sews leaves into delicate ant nests. When building a nest, two ants choose two complete leaves. First, they bite neat holes on both sides with their jaws, and then bend the leaves. One ant stays in the leaves and the other is outside. Then they caught a bug that can release silk, made thread with the silk spit out by the bug, and made lead needle with the bug. The ant outside the leaf plugs the worm into the leaf hole and then lets it get out of another leaf hole. The ants in the leaves are responsible for tightening the spider silk. This splicing is repeated, and finally the leaves are sewn into an ant nest for ants to enter and leave.
In the tropical forest of Amazon River in South America, there is an ant named Easton Army Ant. They have no fixed place and live a hunting life. Usually, they build temporary nests in rotting roots. When they migrate, the group is integrated and the front defense is clear. The front and wings are soldier ants with huge jaws, followed by worker ants, and in the middle are small worker ants carrying young ants and pupae.
The soldiers in Easton's army ants have a pair of sharp jaws, which is very terrible. It can bite through and crush the thick skin of large animals, and can chew a python to the bone in a few hours. They also have pliers on their tails, which can poison and paralyze their prey. On the move, they attack all edible animals with great courage.
1884, when British zoologist Bates was exploring Brazil, he observed this kind of army ant in the tropical forest of Amazon River. Whenever the army ants attack, no matter what animals are in the forest, they are terrified. In the roaring, wailing, struggling and fleeing of other animals, the army ants rushed forward like a crimson torrent. If the road is uneven, worker ants will use it. Your body paved the way for the "big brigade" to pass smoothly. If it is a deep pit, the worker ants will contact each other and build a "cable bridge" with their bodies to let their partners pass.
Army ants have the habit of biting and not letting go. Interestingly, Indians in ancient India and America used this characteristic of military ants for surgical wound suture. They let the army ants bite the skin on both sides of the wound tightly and then cut off their bodies. Although the army ants were beheaded, their powerful jaws were still biting their skin. It is said that this special suture operation can not only prevent the wound from festering, but also heal quickly.
In the tropical forests of South America, there is a migratory soldier ant. They use their bodies to build temporary ant nests. The ant nest looks like a hive of bees, but the difference is that there are many small rooms with walls made up of ant carcasses inside this big ant colony. In this small room made up of ants, larvae and pupae are raised. When this nest is coveted and attacked by foreign enemies, it will break into individual ants, immediately pick up larvae and pupae, move to a new location, and rebuild the nest.
Some forest areas in China and Yunnan also have this kind of rogue ant colony. Once local residents smell the attack of a large group of ants, they usually move poultry, livestock and people together to avoid the front. After leaving the ant colony, go back to the village. Fortunately, the house was not damaged, and some cockroaches, mice and beetles were eaten up by ants. As a result, bad things turned into good things.
When ants go out for food, they usually return to their nests accurately, which has been bothering some people. It turns out that ants have many ways to get back to their hometown easily. There is a fire ant. When the reconnaissance ant finds food, it will smear a smell trace on the ground with a stinger as a "signpost" on the way home to report. Worker ants will follow this smell to carry food. After the worker ants pass by, they can deepen this odor trace and let more partners carry it. Some ants living in the desert release trace hormones into the air. When there is no wind, this smell road sign can last for a long time in the scorching desert, and workers can guide the way and deliver food according to this smell.
In the tropical forests of Africa, an ant with a bad smell found its way back to its nest in an unexpected way when it was out foraging. Because smelly ants live in places with limited light conditions, they can rely on the orientation of the crown. When it leaves the nest, it takes the tree crown as a road sign and can accurately return to the ant nest within 5 meters from the nest.
Desert ants in the Sahara desert in North Africa fight alone and never get lost. Scientists have found that the visual cells under the compound eye lens system of these ants are equipped with structures that are extremely sensitive to polarized light, and desert ants rely on polarized light to determine their own direction. Among ants, some ants, such as big hunting ants and dog fighting ants, have such skills.
Ants can not only farm, thresh, sew and hunt, but also raise "slaves" on some ants!
1in the middle of the 9th century (1855), many famous British biologists, such as Darwin and Huber, successively discovered and reported such a strange phenomenon:
Huber found that in a big, aggressive red ant nest, there are many smaller black ants living with them, without hindrance. According to common sense, ants distinguish their enemies and friends by smell, and ants in the same nest smell the same. Make an ant nest. When some ants mistakenly enter another nest, they will be immediately killed by the ants in that nest as foreign enemies.
So, why can timid little black ants live safely in the nest of fierce red ants? In order to find out the relationship between them, huber made further observation. He found that the relationship between bamboo shoot system is "exploitation" and "peeling", and its dependence is almost amazing.
The male and female ants of this red ant can't do other work. Worker ants and soldier ants are very brave when they rob "slave ants", but they can't do other work. All "classes" of ants in the whole ant colony can neither build nests, raise offspring, nor feed and transport food. Even moving is done by "slaves". Incredibly, during the migration, the "owners" of these red ants are still sitting in the "sedan chair"! They were taken away by slave ants.
Huber did an interesting experiment: put 30 such parasites in a spacious box. Here are their favorite foods and materials for building ant rooms, next to their offspring-larvae and pupae, but even if they are given such superior conditions to work, the result is futile. Because these red ants can't work or feed themselves, they starve to death next to food. The observer threw an "ant slave" into the box, only to see it immediately carry out rescue activities, raise its "master", set up an ant house and place its offspring. Everything goes so naturally, as if it were its job.
Ants are particularly sensitive to changes in mountains, rivers and climate. These ancestral instincts often make the whole ant colony ward off evil spirits in major natural disasters and become their powerful means in struggle for existence.
Indians in the Amazon basin of South America can predict the time of flash floods very accurately. It turns out that they learned the exact time of flash floods according to the prediction of ants. A few weeks before the flood, reconnaissance ants moved around far from their homes. Sometimes they climb the treetops to detect the changes of temperature and humidity. When the ants felt that there might be a flood, they took action. As long as the local Indians carefully observe the direction of ant colony migration, they can correctly judge the time of flood outbreak and know which areas are flooded and which areas are safe.
The clever action of ants is unparalleled not only in the insect world, but also in some higher animals, such as pigs, cows, dogs and sheep.
Ants are a kind of beneficial insects. It can help people to eliminate pests and prevent the occurrence of pests. Although some ants harass humans and invade livestock; Some ants will bring serious losses to the orchard; Some ants even shelter the enemies of mankind-aphids and scale insects, but as far as the whole life and activities of ants are concerned, they have made great contributions to mankind.
Ants are smart and excellent "scavengers" in nature. They can help humans to deal with a large number of animal residues, remains and corpses in time. Every summer, people can see ants running back and forth and working hard.
Ants are the earliest insects used by human beings to kill pests. As early as around 340 AD, in the book "Southern Vegetation" written by Han Ji in the Jin Dynasty, there was such a record: "People with crossed toes used mats to store ants in the market, and their nests were like thin flocs with branches and leaves, and ants were sold together. Ants are red and yellow, bigger than ordinary ants. If there are no such ants in southern citrus, they are actually harmed by those cockroaches, and none of them are finished. " In 877 AD, Liu Yao's "Different Records of Lingnan" in the Tang Dynasty said: "There are many ants in Lingnan, and there are mat bags to store ants in the city. Ant nests are like thin flocs, which are all connected by branches and leaves. Ants are sold in ant nests. There are yellow ants bigger than ordinary ants, and there are two-legged elders. In Yunnan, the citrus trees in the garden were eaten by many ants. So many people bid for it to raise oranges. "
It seems that this long-legged yellow ant may be what orange farmers in the suburbs of Guangzhou say at present. This kind of ant has been used by orange farmers to control pests in orange orchards, and the effect is extremely remarkable. In the orange orchard, once the yellow ants are stocked, the occurrence and harm of malignant leaf worms, big green worms and Bactrocera dorsalis can be basically controlled.
The application of ants to control sugarcane borers in southern sugarcane orchards is another example of the extreme right-wing effect of pest control. Sugarcane borer is one of the most serious pests that harm sugarcane. Every year, when sugarcane seedlings are planted, sugarcane borers lay eggs between leaf sheaths of sugarcane seedlings. With the growth of sugarcane seedlings, the larvae of sugarcane borers will use a pair of sharp jaws to get into the gaps on the sugarcane nodes. Some sugarcane eaten by sugarcane borers are dead and some are rotten, which greatly reduces the yield of sugarcane and is very harmful. However, there is a reddish-brown ant that can drag the larvae of sugarcane borers out of the sugarcane stems and eat them. Studies have confirmed that red-brown ants can control the harm of sugarcane borers well. Every year in March and April of the lunar calendar, the rainy season in the south begins, and sugarcane farmers look for reddish-brown ants in the fields where the river is soaring. Because the nest of red-brown ants was flooded and forced to move to a higher place, sugarcane farmers inserted a thin tube on the road where red-brown ants moved, so that red-brown ants climbed into the thin tube in droves, and then inserted the thin tube carrying red-brown ants into the sugarcane garden. So the red and brown ants settled in the sugarcane garden.
When searching for sugarcane borer larvae, reddish-brown ants usually bite sugarcane borer larvae that are 10 times larger than their own bodies and drag them back to their nests. If you encounter a big moth, report it immediately. All ants will bravely besiege and catch it together. Sometimes reddish-brown ants will drill into the sugarcane stem, bite the moth tightly with their jaws, drag it out of the wormhole and move back to the ant nest.
Sugarcane borers will move from one node to another with the growth of sugarcane. In winter, it will be transferred from sugarcane sheath to underground sugarcane stem for winter. Smart red ants and brown ants will press and follow the attack. Where sugarcane borers move, they chase them
It has been observed that using red-brown ants to control sugarcane borers can reduce the damage rate of sugarcane from 20% to 1%. In the perennial sugarcane garden where the red-brown queen has been kept for three years, sugarcane borers have basically disappeared. Therefore, some people call red-brown ants the guardians of sugarcane fields, and they really live up to their reputation.
There are also many examples of using ants to kill pests abroad. For example, Europe often uses a red ant to control beet armyworm; Using a subspecies of red ant to control pine sawfly. In India, there are also reports that ants kill weevils. In Hawaii, some ants are important natural enemies of Mediterranean fruit flies.
It will be interesting to think about the living habits of ants, a small insect. Besides, ants are good friends who help us to eliminate pests!