ants

Ants / is a family of social insects that fall under the family of anteaters of the order Hymenoptera, which is the same order to which both wasps and bees belong. Ants evolved from the ancestors of wasp-like during the Cretaceous period - about 99 million years ago - and diversified after the emergence of flowering plants More than 12,500 species have been classified out of a total of 22,000 .

Ants form colonies consisting of dozens of predatory individuals that live in small natural cavities in highly organized colonies that may occupy large areas of land, and consist of millions of individuals, and large colonies are mostly made up of sterile, wingless females that form a class of "workers" and "soldiers" Or other specialized groups, and in all ant colonies there are sometimes some males for pollination and there is also one or more females that are ready for pollination and she is called the “queen”, and the colonies are described as the super organism; Because the ants act as a unified entity, and collectively to support the colony

Ants have colonized almost all parts of the earth, except Antarctica and some remote or uninhabited islands. Ants thrive in most ecosystems and can make up 15-25% of the biomass of wild animals, and their success in their multiple environments is attributed to their social organization and ability to modify habitats. , taking advantage of resources, and defending themselves, and their length of co-evolution with other species has led to disguise, cohabitation, parasitism, and trade-offs

Ants have a just social system where all members of the colony are equal in rights and no ant is distinguished from another and every ant preserves the public interest, then the ant knows its friend from its enemy by the touch of its horns in the peninsula, which is the line of ants’ passage and its sequence, where it was found that by observation that each group has its own signs They get to know each other and it is not possible to allow an ant from another group to enter the colony, and the ant colony consists of: the queen, the males, the coin, and the soldier

The queen can remain fertilized until she reaches the age of ten, and scientists have noticed that the longevity of the queen is one of the things that are beneficial to the ants, as with her death the entire social organization of the colony collapses, and it appears that they - the rest of the ants - believe that she is important, so they keep the dead queen’s body close to them so that there is no left Only a few, and eventually the colony disintegrates; There is no new currency or soldiers to replace what dies or loses

The life of each species varies according to its social function. Males live only a short period; Its function is to pollinate each successive generation of queens, while female workers and soldiers live the longest, and the queens are the longest-lived of all, and an ant lives to six or seven years in the average colony