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RESEARCH ANT QUIZ |
| Ants have been living on
earth for more than 100 million years and can be found
almost anywhere on the planet. An ant is an
insect. Ants have three main body parts: the head,
thorax, and abdomen. The outside of the ant's body is
covered with a hard shell called the exoskeleton. The head of an ant consists of the brain, eyes, jaws, and antennae. An ant's brain has about 250,000 brain cells. The human brain has 10,000 million brain cells. That means that a colony of 40,000 ants together has the same size brain as a human brain. The ant has two compound eyes. Each eye is made of many smaller eyes. Each of these smaller eyes allows the ant to see movement very well. The ant has a pair of large, strong jaws. These jaws open and shut sideways like a pair of scissors. Adult ants cannot chew and swallow solid food. They swallow the juice from food and throw away the dry part that is left over. The antennae are special organs of smell, touch, taste, and hearing. Ants have six legs. Each leg has three joints. The legs are attached to the thorax. The legs of the ant are very strong and they can run very fast. If a person could run as fast for his size as an ant he would be able to run as fast as a racehorse. Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight. The abdomen of the ant has two stomachs. The one stomach holds food for the ant itself and the other stomach is for the food to be shared with the other ants. Many species of ants have poison sacks and/or stingers at the end of the abdomen to use for defense. Ants do not have lungs. Oxygen enters through tiny holes all over the body and carbon dioxide leaves through the same holes. Ants do not have blood vessels. The heart is a long tube that pumps colorless blood from the head back to the abdomen and then back up to the head. The blood coats the insides of the ant and is then sucked into the tube and pumped up to the head again. The nervous system is long nerve cord that runs from the head to the abdomen with branches leading to the various parts of the body. Ants have four growing stages: egg, larva, pupa, and adult. Ants live for about 45 - 60 days. Ants are classified by biologist as a special group of wasps, Hymenoptera Formicidae. It is estimated that there are about 20,000 different species of ants. Ants live in different types of homes. Many ants build simple little mounds of dirt or sand. Other ants use small sticks mixed with dirt and sand to make stronger mounds. Ant mounds consist of many chambers connected by tunnels. Different chambers are used for nurseries, food storage, and resting places for the worker ants. Some ants live in wood . Army ants don't make a home but travel as large groups searching for food. Ants live in large groups or colonies. Some colonies consist of millions of ants. In each species of ant there are three types of ants: the queen, the sterile female workers, and the males. The male ants only job is to mate with the queen and they do not live very long. The queen grows to adulthood, mates, and then spends the rest of her life laying eggs. A colony may have one queen or there may be several queens depending on the species. Worker ants look for food, look after the young, and defend the nest from unwanted visitors. Ants are clean insects. Some worker ants have the job of removing the garbage and placing it outside the nest in a special garbage dump. Each colony of ants has its own smell. In this way intruders can be recognized immediately. Many ants such as the Red species have a stinger which helps them defend the nest. The common Black Ant and Wood Ants have no stinger but they can squirt a spray of formic acid. Some birds put ants in their feathers because the ants squirt formic acid which gets rid of parasites. Ants communicate by touching each other with their antennae. Also ants can leave a scent trail of chemicals call pheromones for other ants to follow to food sources. |
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