#ant facts

[futurebird]

Bronze Age Ant Nerds

Thinking about the Bronze Age nerd who had a serious special interest in ants, and probably kept a colony in a clay jar as pets driving their family crazy... observing them and learning that each colony has a queen, that they store grain in underground chambers, and probably many other interesting ant facts which they would have told everyone incessantly so they became common knowledge.

[residents-of-the-darkforest]

Ants don’t have ears but listen by the vibrations of the ground through their legs

so if you put them on a speaker at full blast,

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

Fun fact: In terms of agriculture and animal herding l, ants have us beat by 60,000,000 years! And they’re better at it!

[wild-wow-facts]

Ants: Nature's Hidden Heroes

Discover the incredible world of ants and their vital role in maintaining soil health and nutrient recycling. Join us in exploring these fascinating creatures!

Check out my other videos here: Animal Kingdom Animal Facts Animal Education

[saraichinwag]

Why Are Ants So Small?

[ker-partage]

Ant Kingdom: Life in the Colonies-The Fascinating Facts About Ant Societies

[pr1ncessasuke]

I’m THROWING UP AND SCREAMI

(Got permission from op on Twitter to cross post!)

[casekai]

achilles :)

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy Valentine's Day! (and this blog's first post anniversary!)

[batri-jopa]

From wild_discovery_rh on Instagram

[futurebird]

Your Ants

There are 2.5 million ants per person. I like to think specific colonies are assigned to each of us. Your *particular* ants.

Perhaps you have been assigned just three massive colonies of leaf cutters. Perhaps you are assigned 10,000s of tiny colonies of many different species each with dozens to 100s of ants.

But, what is more remarkable is that *each* of your assigned ants has to her (or occasionally him) assigned about 22,800 nematodes.

How do the little girls keep track of them all?

[mantismage]

Honeypot ants are fascinating, but feel like something that in concept, is terrifying. And would definitely be a plotline in a Mad Max movie.

These are specalised worker ants that deliberately consume huge amounts of food, to the point where their abdomens will swell to ridiculous sizes. The sclerites (the thickened keratin armour) on their abdomens will separate, revealing the honey inside of their abdominal membrane.

These ants will collect and store liquid which other ants in the colony will then consume, basically functioning as living larders. When they become big enough, they'll hang from the ceiling and can reach the size of a blueberry or a small grape:

They're mostly found in more arid areas of the world; in hot deserts, dry woodlands and other similar habitats (Australia, North Africa, some areas in the Americas etc.). Their existence is likely to allow for colonies to store food during extreme dry seasons, or during periods where food is scarce.

There's been some research indicating that honeypot ants contain unique antimicrobial properties within their honey, which has been used by indigenous people in Australia for centuries!

(Extra note: They also go by repletes or rotunds?? I love scientists.)

Resources and extra reading:

Conway, J. R. (1991). The biology and aboriginal use of the honeypot ant, “Camponotus inflatus” Lubbock, in Northern Territory, Australia. Australian Entomologist, 18(2), 49–56. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.108392124224680

Dong AZ, Cokcetin N, Carter DA, Fernandes KE. (2023). Unique antimicrobial activity in honey from the Australian honeypot ant (Camponotus inflatus) PeerJ, 11:e15645 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.15645

National Geographic (2016). Honey Ant Adaptations. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20210120124043/https://www.nationalgeographic.org/media/honey-ant-adaptations-wbt/

[antsday]

okay i will admit it: i don't like 431 from a narrative standpoint (or really any standpoint) but if you view it exclusively as the true epilogue in an alternate universe of mha in which 5 year old katsuki is right about deku looking down on him and doing everything to spite him and wanting to bring about his downfall then the whole thing becomes kind of absurdly funny

[mari-lair]

AU where Killua becomes a chimera ant. Since he was eaten with the needle, Illumi's nen influence becomes a permanent part of his new body: He is more paranoid about letting people close.

[antarctite]

like do we have to reiterate every time the agab/cagab debate comes up that one of the earliest examples of assigned gender as terminology comes from THE FIFTIES in a medical book detailing OUR ABUSE AS INTERSEX CHILDREN, and that painting our complaints ab appropriating the language as “transmisogyny” is intersexist.

the fact that the web extension meant to flag ACTUAL TRANSPHOBIA is flagging intersex folk (and any trans ppl under the sun that dont agree with the narrow view of transfeminism as the devs) is an obvious example of how biased a voting system of “is x user y type of bigoted” is. im surprised it even worked for as long as it did before it came crashing down.

[pluviatrix]

dooble of botw link entertaining a little girl to celebrate totk SOON !!!!! !! !