An ant is an insect that lives in huge colonies, within which a strict hierarchy prevails. The ant has long been considered a symbol of hard work and self-sacrifice, and its physical capabilities continue to remain a mystery. After all, it has been scientifically proven that an ant can support a mass 10 times its own weight. And how dashingly the forest “strong man” carries a huge larva on the way to the anthill - just a breathtaking sight! So how much does an ant weigh? This and other interesting facts from the life of these amazing insects is our topic today.
What is the weight of ants
In general, the weight itself depends on the type of ant. Our ants (red and black) can reach a weight of up to 9 milligrams. But the heaviest ant weighs 150 milligrams (there are no such ants in our area).
The easiest type of ant is the pharaoh ant. Their maximum weight can reach 2 milligrams.
The queen of the African wandering ant breed can reach up to 10 grams during the period of sedentary life. Such a queen can lay 120 eggs every day, which is also a record not only for ants, but for insects in general. African wandering ants are also considered one of the most dangerous ants in the world.
According to statistics, the weight of all ants on Earth is equal to the weight of all people on Earth - here we are talking about billions of tons. Moreover, it is interesting that there are about 10 million ants per person.
In general, what is interesting about ants is not their weight, but their ability to lift heavy weights.
Peculiarities
The Ant cargo scooter is quite easy to maintain. If it breaks, you can turn it on its side and make repairs or replace parts. However, it cannot be called economical, since a 2-liter single-cylinder engine consumes as much as 8 liters per 100 kilometers, and after wear of the piston system it is 10 liters. However, at that time the cost of gasoline was low, so there were no problems with operation.
The simplicity of the motorcycle’s structure does not require any special knowledge of a mechanic, because even to remove the tire there is no need to re-mount it. Simply unscrew the bolts located in a circle. These types of features of the moped allow repairs to be made anywhere, without special equipment. Which is very convenient, because it’s no secret how often Soviet equipment breaks down. However, in case of serious engine and chassis breakdowns, which occur quite often, the knowledge of a mechanic is sometimes simply necessary.
If necessary, you could choose a moped with the most suitable configuration. Thus, models with an additional seat for a passenger and models with a closed body were released.
The Ant scooter currently has many analogues in Asian countries. Road congestion in Asia has made the cargo moped one of the most popular models for hard workers. It allows you to easily navigate narrow alleys and significantly reduces travel time. The Chinese analogue and the original Ant scooter, although they do not have significant differences in appearance, are strikingly different in quality.
Weight that an ant can lift
Today we can say that the maximum weight that an ant can lift is a weight that is 50 times its own weight.
Soldier leaf-cutter ants weigh several dozen times more than ordinary ants, and their queen can weigh up to 700 times more. Naturally, soldiers of this species will appear only when the number of such anthills exceeds 100 thousand, otherwise it will be problematic for a smaller number of workers to feed such an army.
If we compare the strength of an ant with the strength of a person, then a person must lift a barbell weighing up to 150 tons, which is completely beyond belief.
How much do Hymenoptera weigh?
In nature, there are more than 12,000 varieties of these hardworking ants, differing in size and appearance. So, depending on the species, the average weight of an ant ranges from 1-150 mg. Speaking about the ant workers of black and red forest insects, their weight is no more than 7 mg. The smallest weight of ants, called pharaoh ants, does not exceed 2 mg. The Siafu nomads are considered one of the largest and heaviest. The weight of an ant of this species is up to 90 mg.
Ant weight
Interesting!
The weight of the uterus of a wandering termite is equal to the weight of 200-700 working individuals. And this is not the only feature of the queen. Its lifespan can be up to 20 years. But the mass of a soldier ant, or as it is also called a “defender,” is tens of times greater than the weight of the workers. Although these species live much less than their queen.
What is the power of ants
Here it is necessary to note the fact that we are talking not only about ants, but about all insects in general. Absolutely all insects can develop enormous strength and power. The same fleas very quickly push their body over a distance 150 times their body length. And scarab beetles can lift up to 850 times their body weight. After such examples, even the strength of an ant seems very insignificant.
The reason for such phenomenal abilities of ants and insects in general has long been explained by scientists. In the animal world, there is a law according to which, when the geometric dimensions of the body of a living creature decrease, its mass decreases in proportion to the length of the body to the third power, and the cross-sectional area of the muscles decreases in proportion to the square of the body length.
It's a little complicated, but this means that ants have muscles 100 times stronger per unit mass than humans. And this proportion is also observed for other living beings - crustaceans, fish, mammals. And in addition, the exoskeleton and a slightly different muscle structure bring their own premiums into these calculations.
This does not at all mean that the smallest ant is the strongest. Here everything is the other way around - the largest ant is the strongest.
Ant lifting capacity
Information about how much weight an ant can lift can greatly surprise a person’s imagination. Entomologists claim that this representative of the Hymenoptera lifts a weight that is 50 times greater than its own body weight. A good example is the leaf cutter. Knowing his weight, it is assumed that it is not difficult for him to bear weights that reach 100 mg.
But not only these ants have this ability. Representatives of another group of insects can also set similar records. Many Coleoptera push and pull loads that are many times their own weight. Orthoptera or blood-sucking parasites jump long distances. It is also a type of weight transfer because jumping requires you to lift your own body weight off the ground.
The leader in carrying heavy loads is the scarab beetle (dung beetle) . He lifts a weight almost a thousand times greater than his body weight. This is compared to what it would be like for a person to lift 6 double-decker buses at the same time.
What other abilities do ants have?
Besides the fact that everyone knows ants as powerful creatures, they also have advantages that they can boast of.
Everyone has probably heard about ant bridges? Why do ants build them and how do they do it? They are built exclusively by working individuals so that queens can cross this bridge and larvae can be transported, avoiding various kinds of obstacles (for example, water). Thousands of ants build a strong bridge, covering each other’s bodies so powerfully that even a cat can run across this bridge. But, of course, she will not do this, since ants can bite, and their bite is very painful.
As for leaf-cutter ants, they can drag behind them a load that will weigh 30 times more than their body weight.
In central Africa, ants are used to stitch up cuts on the human body. It sounds scary, of course, but it’s a fact. Both ends of the wound are applied to each other and then they take the ant and separate its jaws over both sides of the wound. And like a stapler they clamp the jaws of an ant. It is important to cut off the ant's head in time so that the jaws do not unclench.
Woman
Egyptian Eman Ahmed is considered the heaviest woman in the world, but she hopes to get rid of this title soon. Eman Ahmed, who suffers from thyroid problems, weighs 500 kg, her family said. She has been bedridden for two decades and unable to move or communicate after a stroke, so she spends her time just staring at the ceiling.
However, thanks to an online fundraising campaign, she may have hope for a better life. Mumbai-based surgeon Dr. Muffazal Lakdawala is raising money to bring the Egyptian woman to India and perform a series of operations that will reduce her weight to at least 100 kg.
How do ants reproduce?
In general, ants reproduce only twice a year. they have two methods of reproduction:
- The female takes with her several individuals of worker ants (because it is the workers who are intended for the fertilization function) and leaves her “home” to create a new family.
- The female flies to another family of ants, where she is fertilized by other worker ants, after which she lays eggs.
The female takes with her several individuals of worker ants (because it is the workers who are intended for the fertilization function) and leaves her “home” to create a new family.
The female flies to another family of ants, where she is fertilized by other worker ants, after which she lays eggs.
After a while, the males that fertilized the female die, and the female feeds on the remains of her wings until the larvae hatch. Of those eggs that are fertilized, workers and females are born, and of those that are not fertilized, only males are born.
In general, ants are an insect that can be considered harmless, since they cannot harm human health. The only downside to having them in the house is that they run around the house and look for food. Ants should not be killed, as they destroy many harmful insects that interfere with life in everyday life (mosquitoes, moths, flies, and so on).
Features of the body structure of a worker ant, soldier, female and male: description
- The uterus is large in size. Before mating, females have wings, which they chew off for additional nutrition when they lay eggs. The queen's breasts are more powerful and developed, and her abdomen is wider.
- Males are significantly smaller than females. Most have wings, but there are also wingless ones.
- Workers are females who cannot have offspring. They are more modest in size than the uterus. They don't have wings. The structure of the chest is simplified, the eyes are smaller and may be absent.
- Soldiers are larger workers with a disproportionately large head and powerful mandibles that allow for effective defense.
Anthill. How it is built and what is in it
In general, ants can be compared to humans, because they, like humans, build their homes with all the amenities.
- Ants are engineers and builders who build their homes using tunnels and other communications. Ants have soldiers who perform several functions: the most important function is to protect the anthill from attack, from enemies entering their territory. Protection of other ants that bring food, since soldier ants are not able to obtain food for themselves. In addition, soldier ants help worker ants to dismember prey if the workers fail. Soldiers have stronger jaws. If necessary, soldier ants are capable of seizing other people's territories.
- Ants are doctors . Their function is to maintain the health of working individuals and the functioning of all the legs of ants. If necessary, they perform operations to rehabilitate non-working or diseased paws.
- Ants are nurses . Their duties include surveillance and incubation of larvae.
- Foraging ants are engaged in looking for food for the entire family, and also laying out the prey in specially designated storage areas.
- Ants are farmers . They grow aphids, honey beetles and scale insects. They keep an eye on their harvest and when the time comes, they extract a tasty liquid from them.
- Harvester ants collect all kinds of seeds from different plants.
- Carpenter ants extract juice from the very plants that the reapers are watching.
- Gravedigger ants are engaged in transporting their deceased relatives to a place that is popularly called the “Cemetery”.
This is not the entire list of professions that exist in the world of ants. Thanks to such subcompositions, ants do everything quickly and efficiently, since each genus of them is exclusively engaged in its own business.
At the head of the entire family is the queen - this is the largest insect among all ants, which continuously bears and lays eggs, thereby ensuring continuous replenishment of new inhabitants. The queen is the insect that managed to build its own home, leaving the previous one and distributing all responsibilities among its relatives. After the queen has passed the first population, she bites off her wings.
The lifespan of a queen can be up to twenty years, and she can lay more than 500 thousand eggs throughout her life.
The choice of profession among ants is determined by their physical condition and speed of reaction. The fastest ants take leading positions and become workers, while the slower ones go to harvest crops and graze aphids.
Young individuals are in no hurry to leave their home and at first do business inside the anthill (monitor the larvae and build new passages and exits from their home.
Pulley hoist
10 tons
Greece, around 5th century BC
Plutarch says that in response to King Hiero’s request to demonstrate how a heavy load could be moved with little force, Archimedes “took a three-masted cargo ship, which had previously been pulled ashore with great difficulty by many people, seated many people on it and loaded it with ordinary cargo. After that, Archimedes sat down at a distance and began to effortlessly pull the rope thrown over the pulley, causing the ship to easily and smoothly, as if on water, “float” towards him.”
This story may be fictitious, but the ancient Greeks actually widely used simple mechanisms for lifting weights - levers, pulleys and pulleys.
A pulley block (from the Greek poly many + spao to pull) is a lifting device consisting of a system of movable and fixed blocks, wrapped around a rope or chain. The pulley system provides a gain in strength by distributing the weight of the load over several branches of the rope, while reducing the speed of lifting the load and the distance it travels.
The role of ants in nature
- In general, ants are quite beneficial to the environment.
- Those ants that settle in dead wood can speed up the process of its destruction, thereby freeing the area from diseased trees.
- Ants are predators. During the summer season, ants are capable of destroying several million harmful insects.
- Ants are, in their own way, seed dispersers. When they carry them home, they lose some of the seeds along the way, thereby filling the forests with new plants and trees.
- Ants perform the function of pollinating various plants by extracting juice from them.
- When ants build their underground homes, they loosen the soil very well, thereby allowing plants to grow better there.
- If we talk about a vegetable garden or garden plot, then where there are black ants, we can say that the soil is of high quality.
- Various kinds of tinctures and ointments for treatment are produced from ants, thus we can say that ants are also used for medicinal purposes.
Marine crane
14,000 tons
Each of the two cranes of the Saipem 7000
(Italy, 1985), is capable of lifting seven thousand tons of cargo - a total of 14 thousand tons.
This is the second result after another floating crane, also built in 1985 - the Japanese SSCV Thialf
, having a carrying capacity of 2 × 7100 = 14,200 tons. However, it was the Saipem 7000 that set the absolute world record for lifting weights: 12,150 tons (2004).
Saipem 7000 builds offshore drilling platforms and pipelines in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Africa and Canada. In 2002, he laid two strings of the Blue Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Turkey along the bottom of the Black Sea.
Next: Flight
A little history of these insects
- Ants don't have lungs. The question “how do they breathe?” the structure of the ant's body is so small that there is simply no room for lungs. They breathe the same oxygen, only not through the lungs, but through spiracles, which are located on the sides along the entire body.
- Ants lack ears. It cannot be said that ants are deaf; they hear everything, but only with the help of vibrations.
- Ants have two stomachs. The first stomach is used for the ant to feed itself, and the second stomach is for the ant to bring food to its relatives.
Research and discovery
To conduct the study, the scientists infected a carpenter ant with O. unilateralis. However, some individuals received a dose of a less dangerous, non-zombifying fungal pathogen known as Beauveria bassiana - they served as a control group. By comparing the dynamics of the disease caused by these two fungi, the researchers were able to identify specific physiological manifestations of O. unilateralis activity in ants.
Using electron microscopes, the team created a 3D model to determine the location, abundance and activity of fungal tissues inside the insects' bodies. To do this, samples of these tissues measuring only 50 nm were taken, and observation was carried out using instruments capable of monitoring and processing images at a frequency of 2000 times in 24 hours. To analyze the impressive volume of incoming data, scientists turned to artificial intelligence: an algorithm based on deep learning, during the analysis, highlighted differences in the activities of fungal and ant cells. This allowed the researchers to clearly see at what stage of the disease the body tissues still belonged to the insect, and where they had already been transformed into a fungus.
Computer simulation of how threads of fungal cells grow into host muscle tissue
The results were both extremely interesting and frightening. O. unilateralis cells spread throughout the ant's body, from the head and thorax to the abdomen and legs. Moreover, they were interconnected, creating a kind of collective biological network that controlled the behavior of the ants. Hughes noted that eventually a high percentage of the cells in the host's body turned into fungal cells - which literally made the insect part of itself.
But the most amazing thing was that the brain tissue remained... untouched. "Normally, animal behavior is controlled by the brain, which transmits signals to the muscles, but our findings show that the parasite controls the host's behavior through peripheral systems," explains Hughes. "Almost like a puppeteer pulling strings to control the movements of a puppet, the fungus also controls the ant's muscles, manipulating the host's limbs and mandibles."
Sources
- https://grib-doma.ru/griby/uslovno-sedobnye/korditseps
- https://zen.yandex.com/media/npoz/muravizombi-kak-grib-prevrascaet-muravev-v-bezvolnyh-kukol-5f297e86be09d73c9f3589d4
- https://NoParasites.ru/prochie-parazity/kordiceps-odnobokiy.html
- https://www.PopMech.ru/science/395992-grib-zombi-okazalsya-kuda-opasnee-chem-schitali-uchenye-absolyutnyy-parazit/
- https://Hi-News.ru/eto-interesno/kak-griby-parazity-prevrashhayut-muravev-v-zombi.html
