The largest ant in the world is the African driver ant queen. She is 5 cm long and can lay as many as 1.2 million eggsper month to ensure the long life of the colony. Ants are relatively small (0.75 mm – 50 mm), light (500 milligrams) and clever. They each have about 250 000 brain cells compared with the 10 billion brain cells of humans. Their strength is their organisation and huge population. It has been estimated that their total weight on the Earth is about the same as the weight of the global population of 7 billion people. They are tough, fast and robust. Their crawling (walking) speeds have been estimated to be 75 mm/s and they can lift 50 times their own body weight. They can live as long as 30 years. Trap jaw ants have the fastest jaws in the animal kingdom with a closing speed of 230 km/h. In some parts of the world ants can provide a food source for humans. In Mexico, ants’ eggs are served as a luxury food dish known as escamoles, similar to caviar (expensive fish eggs) and costing £60/kg.

Science and Technology

Science and Technology

study of ants is called myrmecology and it has revealed extraordinary facts about these creatures that are as old as dinosaurs. They evolved from the Cretaceous period 130 million years ago and there are currently 11 800 species in the world covering all…

The largest ant in the world is the African driver ant queen. She is 5 cm long and can lay as many as 1.2 million eggsper month to ensure the long life of the colony. Ants are relatively small (0.75 mm – 50 mm), light (500 milligrams) and clever. They each have about 250 000 brain cells compared with the 10 billion brain cells of humans. Their strength is their organisation and huge population. It has been estimated that their total weight on the Earth is about the same as the weight of the global population of 7 billion people. They are tough, fast and robust. Their crawling (walking) speeds have been estimated to be 75 mm/s and they can lift 50 times their own body weight. They can live as long as 30 years. Trap jaw ants have the fastest jaws in the animal kingdom with a closing speed of 230 km/h. In some parts of the world ants can provide a food source for humans. In Mexico, ants’ eggs are served as a luxury food dish known as escamoles, similar to caviar (expensive fish eggs) and costing £60/kg.

hottg.com/scienceDISC/1437

661 viewsMikiyas, Jan 16, 2023 at 08:08