Amazing Ants and their Cooperative Communities

We ants have been around for more than 130 million years or since the early Cretaceous Period. Today, there are about 14,000 species of us, and an estimated 10 quadrillion ants live on the earth. You can find us everywhere except Antarctica. As social beings, we all live in colonies of various sizes, from just several ants living in a twig to supercolonies with many millions of individuals. We are peace-loving beings that never compete with others in our colony. Our members always help and do whatever is best for the whole community. We automatically share the labor and divide ourselves into groups to perform different tasks. In a typical ant colony, there is a queen who is much larger than all other nest members. The queen’s primary function is to populate the colony by laying eggs. She is the mother of all the ants in the nest. Even though she is called the queen, she never gives orders or directs others on what to do. When a colony is mature and ready to develop new colonies, it will produce males and future queens and both have wings. The male ants have small heads with large eyes, long antennae, and small mandibles. Their only function is to mate with the future queens, then pass on afterward. Aside from the queen, a typical ant colony includes numerous sterile females known as workers. These laborers are responsible for building the nest and keeping it in order, finding food, looking after the brood and queen, and safeguarding the colony. Their lifespan can be between one to three years. Each worker ant joins a group of ants that perform only one task. Yes, we cooperative ants get our jobs done amicably and efficiently through dividing our work among different teams. Most ant colonies stretch deep underground. Some even reach as deep as 8 meters below the surface. We ants are smart and adaptable animals. When the situation changes, we can easily switch from one task to another to handle an emerging incident. Being flexible serves us very well. While humans speak to each other and use body language to communicate, we create pheromones, each containing a scent message to inform others. Other ants decode the meaning using their antennae. We hope you have been inspired by our cooperation and unity and wish you high spirits and good health.