Wonder facts: Ants
are the ultimate colonisers.
There are over one hundred trillion ants on earth - thats 100,000,000,000,000!The Wonder of Animals
A driver ant can lift 5000 times its bodyweight
There are over one hundred trillion ants on earth, approximately 14,000 ants for every human. If you weighed every human and all the ants, the scales would balance.
The resin of contains antibiotic chemicals and is harvested by the European wood ant to disinfect their nests. A large nest can contain up to 20kg of resin.
Key adaptation - feeding the masses
Ants live in colonies which can have populations in their millions. The pressure of feeding so many mouths has made ants the masters of finding food. Many species ferociously hunt their prey, dismember them and return their bounty to the colony, but some also have more 鈥榤odern鈥� strategies and are in fact the world鈥檚 oldest farmers, growing crops and keeping livestock. and grass cutter ants, as their names suggest, use leaf and grass cuttings to cultivate a unique fungus within their nest. Each piece is chewed up and mixed with the fungus; the fungus is then continuously cared for. They even use pesticides to remove unwanted fungal strains or pests from their precious crop. Other ant species herd 'cattle', which they eat and also milk for honeydew, a plant sap excreted by the aphids. They even have their own 鈥榝ences鈥� to prevent the aphids from straying away. Chemicals on ants鈥� feet subdue and sedate the aphids, keeping them nearby.
Ants: fungus farmers
Leaf cutter ants have developed an ingenious way to feed their colony.
