Briefly about ants. The most interesting facts about ants for children Ants are the most numerous insects on Earth

Among many peoples, ants are considered the embodiment of hard work. These amazing creatures created their own civilization with a strict hierarchy, division of responsibilities and huge underground cities riddled with branched underground passages. Ants are also surprisingly adaptable, being able to survive in almost any environment.

1. Ants evolved from wasp-like creatures about 110-130 million years ago. They lived side by side with dinosaurs, but did not go extinct, unlike these giants.
2. Ant colonies can include from tens to several million individuals.
3. There are 12,000 different species of ants on Earth. The length of the smallest of them is only 0.07 centimeters, and the largest reaches 5 centimeters.
4. Many people consider termites to be ants, although they are not even related. The closest relatives of termites are cockroaches (see).
5. Tiny ants make up 15-20% of the total biomass of animals on Earth, surpassing the mass of vertebrate creatures.
6. Scientists estimate that there are about 10 quadrillion ants living on the planet at any given time. There are about a million of these insects for every person.
7. Worker ants live up to 3 years, while the queen ant can reign for up to 30 years.
8. These insects can capture representatives of other ant species, forcing them to work for the benefit of their colony.
9. The world's largest ant supercolony consists of more than a billion individuals and covers over 5,954 square kilometers.
10. The sting of Paraponera clavata ants is terribly painful, and the pain can last for a whole day. These insects are often called "bullet ants" because their attack makes it feel like someone has shot you.
11. Scientists believe that ants are capable of carrying objects 5,000 times heavier than themselves. By comparison, snails can only carry ten times their own weight (see).
12. Ants can reach speeds of up to 7.62 centimeters per second. For a person, the comparable speed is almost 55 kilometers per hour.
13. 13. Ants are the smartest insects. Their brain, despite its modest size, consists of 250 thousand cells.
14. Ants hear with their feet and knees - they pick up vibrations in the ground.
15. Badgers readily feast on ants. Sticking their tongue into the anthill, they wait until the ants attacking the uninvited guest stick to it, and simply swallow the prey (see).
16. Each ant colony has its own scent.
17. The queen ant does nothing but lay eggs. Taking care of them is the responsibility of worker ants.
18. Some ants do not build anthills, but lead a nomadic lifestyle. When it's time to move on, they collect their larvae, food supply, eggs and queen, and then head out.
19. The bite of a black bulldog ant can be fatal to humans. Fortunately, an antidote has been created for this case.
20. Ants are capable of interactive learning - that is, they can acquire knowledge based on the example of others, and not their own. Apart from them, only mammals have this ability.
21. Some species of ants are able to use the Earth's magnetic field as a guide, like some sharks (see).
22. Ants are able to form “living bridges” from their bodies to cross water or plant barriers.
23. The Mexican dish escamoles includes the eggs of several types of ants.
24. Some South American Indian tribes use ants in the rituals of initiation of a boy into a man - a special sleeve with live insects inside is put on the teenager's hand. After this test, the initiate's hand remains paralyzed and swollen for several days, and sometimes the child's fingers turn black from numerous bites.
25. Ants have learned to cultivate living organisms to satisfy their needs.

It is made from twigs, from pine needles

Will build a real house

No saw and no nails.

Who is the builder?.. Ant.

N. Ivanova

Ants are social insects. They live in families in large anthills. The abdomen of ants is connected to the chest using a thin stalk. They have well-developed upper jaws, which they use both for crushing food and for protection from enemies. Females and worker ants have stingers and poison glands that secrete formic acid.

Ant families consist of castes, each of which performs its own functions. The bulk of the family consists of working individuals. They perform all the necessary work in the nest: build and clean it, get food, take care of the offspring, protect the nest from enemies. Some species have a caste of soldiers - large-headed ants, armed with large jaws and acting as guards. The entire family is produced by a single breeding female founder.

One anthill can contain from several hundred to tens of thousands of individuals. In the warm season, usually once a year, a mass appearance of winged males and females occurs in the family. The males soon die, and the females shed their wings and begin to found a new nest, in which they lay the first batch of eggs. The female feeds the hatched larvae with nutritious secretions of the salivary glands. The larvae turn into pupae, then worker individuals emerge from them, begin to expand the nest, take over protecting the family and feeding new larvae.

Ants eat everything, but they especially love sweets. They even specifically breed aphids and protect them from predators. For them, aphids are like milk cows that supply the ants with sweet, sugary juice.

Today, about 10 thousand species of ants are known. They are distributed on all continents except Antarctica, and are especially numerous in the tropics. More than 200 species live in Russia, about half of them in forests.

MYSTERY

He is a real worker

Very, very hard working.

Under a pine tree in a dense forest

He builds a house from needles.

(Ant) PROVERBS AND SAYINGS

The ant is not big, but it digs mountains.

FOLK SIGNS

If ants are hiding in a group, expect strong winds, rain, or thunderstorms.

Ants are insects from the order Hymenoptera. We all know that they live in colonies, they have a queen, they are very hardworking and strong. But there are also things that not everyone knows about. So let's see 15 interesting facts about ants.

1. Ants are, of course, predators. But despite this, they keep their livestock. The role of such livestock is played by aphids. Ants graze aphids, take care of them, protecting them from other insects, and even milk them. Thus, the aphids secrete a special liquid, which the ants happily use as food. And of course, aphids serve as food for them. In general, ants are the only living creatures, other than humans, that raise livestock.

2. Ants have clear responsibilities: builders, soldiers, foragers (those who search for food). If the forager returns several times with nothing, he is executed and allowed to eat himself.

3. There are some species that are exactly like ants in a pod, except that ants have 6 legs, and spiders have 8. Such spiders, as a rule, take advantage of this similarity to protect themselves from birds and other insects, since ants are not an object of gastronomic passion for no one (except, probably, anteaters). But some such spiders, on the contrary, take advantage of this similarity to hunt the ants themselves. They close their two paws, go into the anthill, pick out and kill the ant, after which they take it out of the anthill, like a dead comrade, and eat it themselves.

4. Ants can not only punish, but also care. If an ant is injured, they will take care of it until it recovers, and if the ant becomes crippled, then other ants will also take care of it and bring it food as long as it is able to ask for it.

5. Most ants are the working class and all worker ants are females whose reproductive system is underdeveloped.

6. Ants are not allowed to eat the food they find. First, they must bring all the food they find to the anthill, after which distribution takes place.

7. One of the common delicacy dishes is "". These are ant larvae. This dish costs about $90 per kilogram.

8. The ant queen (queen) lives on average 15 years and mates only once in her entire life, but constantly produces her offspring.

9. If an ant is idle and does nothing for no apparent reason, then it is kicked out of the anthill. But what is also interesting is the fact that this even applies to the queen. Ants can kick out the queen if she produces few offspring and then choose a new one.

10. American entomologist Derek Morley monitored the behavior of ants and found out that when they wake up, they stretch out all 6 of their legs, after which they open their jaws wide, which means the ants also stretch and yawn when they wake up.

11. Many people think that ants and termites are practically the same species, but this is not true. Ants are closer to bees and wasps, and termites are closer to!

12. Among some tribes in South America, the rite of passage for a boy to become a man goes like this: the boy puts on a sleeve full of ants. After numerous bites, the boy's hands become swollen, paralyzed and even blackened, but this goes away over time.

13. Formic acid has proven itself very well as a pain reliever for diseases such as arthritis, arthrosis, rheumatism, gout, etc.

14. Many species of ant can stay under water for several days and nothing will happen to them.

15. Ants can always find their way to their anthill. This is explained by the fact that ants leave a trail of pheromones behind them, along which they find their way home.

Large faceted eyes and antennae stand out on the head.
Ants have three pairs of legs. Moreover, each paw is “equipped” with a hooked claw.

The color of ants ranges from light yellow to dark brown and black.
Size from 2-3 mm to 3 cm.

Ants are practically omnivorous. They eat other insects, carrion, plant sap, seeds, mushrooms, and nectar. She also breeds aphids to obtain a sweet substance that the aphids secrete (for ants, aphids are like goats for us).

Ants are social animals. They build large anthills.
Thousands of ants run around and around the anthill. Some of them carry building material: lumps of soil, needles, bud scales; others - prey: a bug, a fly, a caterpillar.
Sometimes ants bring eggs (larvae) to the surface - small white oval beads.

The most important thing in the anthill is the queen - the mother of all the ants in the family.
The rest of the ants do all the work; they are the ones who are called workers.

To protect themselves, ants use powerful jaws or shoot formic acid from their abdomen.
If a major attack occurs, all the inhabitants of the anthill rise to defend their house.

Interesting Facts!

Incredible, but true - for every living person there are about a million ants.

In Africa there is a species of wandering ants. They never live long in one place. Stray ants are large, aggressive and very dangerous. When the inhabitants of a village learn that such a colony is about to pass through their settlement, they leave their homes, taking all their domestic animals with them. If you forget a goat in a stall, the ants will bite it to death. But they destroy all cockroaches, rats and mice in the villages.

On average, an ant lifts 50 times its own weight.

A message about ants for children will tell you a lot of useful information about these hard-working, little insects.

About ants for children

Ant: description for children

You will never confuse an ant with other insects. They are very active, wingless, fussy and constantly on the move. In nature, you rarely see a single ant, even when they are away from home. Such insects are called workers. In one nest their number can range from a thousand to a million individuals. An ant family may have one queen or several. The queen is constantly in the nest and does not leave it, since her wings are too weak to fly. She makes only one flight - mating, and then on a warm, windless day.

After fertilization, the males die, and the females sink to the ground and shed their wings. They are looking for a secluded place where they can breed. However, worker ants often discover their hiding place and drag them into their nest. Thus, there can be several queens in one nest.

Where do ants live?

These insects live in nests or anthills. Ant nests are usually connected to the ground. They can be in the form of mounds of soil or made from the remains of vegetation. Such nests are most common. Some insects live without mounds, just in the soil, or they settle under stones or in wood.

How do ants live? Insect feeding

Mostly all ants are predators, feeding their larvae with insects and other animal food. The basis of their diet: caterpillars and larvae. Worker ants also consume flowering vegetation and milk aphids.

Children about an ant: how do they communicate?

To communicate with each other, they use a variety of signals: touching another ant with their feet, antennae or head. They also use chemical signals. If disturbed, the insects take a defensive position: they rise on their hind legs and slightly tilt their abdomen forward. The ant releases a special liquid, which consists of an alarm substance and formic acid.

Ants that live in the same nest have the same smell. In this way, they recognize each other and do not allow other insects into their home.

• Ants are the oldest insects: they are more than 100 million years old. Today they can be found everywhere except Greenland, Iceland and Antarctica.
• The main occupation of the insect is preparing food reserves for winter.
• They only move in formation.
• Some ants are very poisonous. For example, if you are bitten by a Paraponera clavata ant, the pain will last for more than a day.
• Ants are the smartest insects. The brain consists of 250 thousand cells.
• In Mexico, ant eggs are eaten. The dish is called "escamoles".

We hope that the essay about ants helped you prepare for the lesson. And you can leave your little story about ants using the comment form below.