Blog3

Interesting facts about ants

1. They can sew up wounds.
Minor wounds seem like a trifle to us, given that advanced medicine is available to most of us. However, if we are in the middle of the African savannah, and we do not have a first-aid kit with us, and it takes several days to get to the nearest first-aid post, treating a small wound can mean life or death. As it turns out, some tribes, such as the Masai Nars, have already encountered a similar problem, and have found an easy way to help themselves - strong claws of army ants.
If a Masai warrior is far from home in the African desert and has received a wound that requires stitches, all he has to do is look for a nest of army ants and select a few of the largest individuals. Then he puts the ant so that biting, he captured both sides of the wound. After that, the body of the ant is torn off and thrown away, and only the head remains. A suture created with homemade surgical staples can last for several days and can be easily changed if needed.
2. They can clone themselves.
Parthenogenesis is a form of reproduction in which there is no need for fertilization, resulting in the resulting offspring being clones of the mother. Amazon ants give birth to clones of themselves, creating colonies in which there is not a single male. This is reminiscent of the legend of the fearless Amazons, who did not tolerate the company of men.

Not to be left out, male small fire ants, whose queens also practice parthenogenesis, in order to produce other queens, make their genes also pass on. This special trick of the male fire ants is that they delete the female genome in some of the fertilized eggs, which makes the ant an exact copy of its father. This unique reproductive maneuver for both females and males results in an anthill in which three completely different species live: queen clones, male clones, and sterile female workers with mixed genes.
3. Ants train their young.
Being social insects, ants have managed to develop a very advanced system where, for the survival of the entire colony, worker ants are divided into groups that are engaged in certain activities, such as gathering food, cleaning or caring for eggs or small ants. The amazing thing is that these worker ants are not born with the skills for this or that job programmed into their genome. In order to develop these skills, they do what we do, learn from those ants who know how to properly perform this or that task. The “learning style” of teacher ants is called joint running, where the teacher ant simultaneously teaches the young ant everything that can be useful for doing a certain type of work, clearly showing him how to do it. Even more amazing is that this teaching method involves two-way communication between student and teacher, which is quite surprising for a non-human being. If a student learns too slowly or does not cope with the task, he is transferred to another job that does not require those skills in which he is not strong.

4. They know a lot about agriculture.
Among all creatures, we are one of four species that have evolved enough to use agriculture as a means of survival: bark beetles, termites, humans, and ants. However, if you take ants and us, they started farming much earlier, given that they have been around for 50 million years. Before leaving the anthill to form her own, where she can give birth, the young queen first visits the garden to collect mushroom spores. These spores are the "seeds" she needs to make her garden and to feed her subjects.
Ants of some species are engaged in agriculture, gathering mushrooms, just like humans harvest crops. They even use pesticides to keep parasites from ruining their crops. There are five systems of farming practiced by ants, however all ants involved in farming show common mushroom breeding skills. This could mean that the ants are somehow telling their fellow gardeners how to better care for and increase their crops.
5. They use herbicides and disinfectants.
Speaking of pesticides, it is worth noting that in their mushroom gardens, ants use not only them, but also herbicides. However, their pesticides are much more environmentally friendly than ours. The fungal gardens that ants grow are also home to a virulent species of fungus that kills fungal crops. To prevent the spread of this fungal weed, ants have special bacteria at their disposal that they carry on their paws. These bacteria produce an antibiotic that inhibits the growth of this particular fungal weed.