Amazing Facts about Ants

10 Interesting and amazing facts about ants You Probably Didn't Know.

1. Ants nurse wounded warriors back to health

AfricaMatabel ants dress the wounds of their soldiers injured in battle and nurse them back to health, a new study finds. Such behavior is believed to be unique among animals. Source 1 Source 2

2. Ants reproduce by cloning themselves

Some species of ants are asexual. They don't need a partner to reproduce. They reproduce through asexual parthenogenesis or cloning, and all of those offspring will be female. Source

3. World’s largest supercolony

In Europe, the Argentine ants have developed the world’s largest supercolony ever recorded. It was stretched 6,000km from northern Italy, through the south of France to the Atlantic coast of Spain. Source

4. The Ants are talking

Ants can produce scented chemicals also known as pheromones. The Pheromones are detect with their antennae. They release different pheromone perfumes, each represents a ‘chemical word’ that the entire colony understand. Ants also communicate by exchanging the liquids from mouth-to-mouth. Source 1 Source 2

5. Ants sre incredibly strong

Generally, Ants can carry the objects up to 50 times their body weight. This is equivalent to a human being lifting up a car. The Asian weaver ant can lift 100 times its own mass. A study found that the neck joint of a common American field ant can withstand pressures up to 5,000 times the ant’s weight. Source 1 Source 2

6. Total weight of ants on earth is equal to the total weight of humans on earth

According to an estimation, the total weight of all the ants on the earth is approximately equal to the total weight of all the humans on the earth. For every human being living on the planet, there are about one million ants. Source

7. Farmer ants

Ants started agriculture for food at least 50 million years before we started farming. Source

8. Ants are found on every continent except Antarctica

Ants are found on every continent except Antarctica, and only a few large islands, such as Greenland, Iceland, parts of Polynesia and the Hawaiian Islands lack native ant species. Source

9. Ants as old as dinosaurs

A study from Harvard University concluded that modern-day ants arose 140 to 168 million years ago. Source

10. All Ants are not necessarily short-lived...

The queen ants can live for up to 30 years, and workers live from 1 to 3 years. But Males live for only a few weeks and die after mating. Source

11. Sleeping

Worker ants take 250 naps a day that last a little over a minute long on average and total of 4 hours and 48 minutes of sleep. Queen ants sleep for about 9 hours per day, falling asleep 90 times for 6 minutes at a time. Source