Formicidae | The common stingers
Ants are the most abundant species on earth and we have discovered roughly about 15,000 species of ants, the weight of all the ants combined is greater than the weight of all humans combined on earth. Ants can lift objects of 10 - 50 times greater than their own weight especially Asian weaver ants can lift about 100 times their own body weight.
It's body is primarily divided into three parts :-
- Head - They have a very small brain compared to to it's body size any many mammals and is (as many researchers believe) very small to fell emotions but are remarked to fell as a whole colony. They have an exoskeleton made of chitin. They have also have pinchers which are also referred as jaws sometimes. Ants also have compound eyes, meaning that they have hundreds of thousands of ommatidia (individual and separate lens, cornea and photoreception cells) but unlike us they a hexagonal lens.
- Thorax - Thorax connects the head to the abdomen and also an anchor for it's legs.
- Abdomen - The abdomen of an ant contains all the digestive organs like gaster, guts etc.
Ants also have two stomachs ; one for digestion and the other for storing carrying food which is to be shared with others in it's colony.
Adult ants cannot digest solids. Therefore everything they eat has to be turned into liquids before entering the digestive track. When ants eat a solid food they turn it into liquid by dissolving it in their saliva and other bodily fluid and then swallow. After swallowing the food enters into a filter chamber which allows only liquids to pass through and compresses if any solid pieces of food into a pellet and the pellet get spit out by the ant. The food then enters the "Gaster" and passes to it's guts (also inside gaster) for assimilation.
Arthropods including ants don't have hemoglobin in their blood but instead have hemocyanin and hemolymph. Former is used for binding, transportation and storing of di-oxygen and latter one for transportation medium for exchanges of hormones, waste material and nutrients.
Ants have spiracles, small tiny holes that ( present along their bodies either side) are used for respiration. By diffusion oxygen along with other gases enters the body through these holes.
Ants are as Marvellous as humans in civilizations, social interactions and employment if not even more in working and understanding other individuals.
Comment below for any suggestion or topics for next blog 😊👍😃.
------------------------------ Maanavendra Roy ------------------------------
The blogs are getting better as they come. Very impressed.
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