Ants are an extremely numerous species, being everywhere on the planet. If you took every single human on earth and put them on a scale, ants would would weigh roughly the same amount.
Ants are very small compared to most land animals, but are also very complex and different. Ants have roughly 22,000 subspecies, and have a number of different roles. There are worker ants, which are very common and assist with building ant mounds. Fire ants are also very common, as when they bite it feels like you are being burned. Fire ants often defend the ant mounds, as a bite to a small animal from a fire ant can be deadly.
Ants are born from a queen ant, which can bear hundreds, and even over a thousand eggs a day. Ants grow through metamorphosis, or life stages. They start off as an egg, and then hatch into a larva, which is mostly immobile, as is therefore carried by worker ants. The ant then grows into a pupa and afterward a fully grown ant.
Ant colonies are started by queen ants, which are very large ants who dig the colonies and give birth to the ants. Queen ants start off as well fed young female ants, and will later grow wings and find a good spot for a colony. The queen will then dig the hole, and give birth to the colony.
Ants are generally aggressive towards other colonies, such as the Pavement Ant which will attack other colonies viciously, and will steal other colonies’ food or larvae and will raise them as workers or eat them. Other ants such as the Amazon ants will kidnap workers, as they cannot gather their own food.
Ants can be very helpful to humans but they can also be a large nuisance. Ants can assist in the aeration of soil, but can also invade and damage homes. In some countries such as Africa, they use ants to aid in closing wounds. They get the ant to bite the wound closed, then they cut their bodies off, creating an effective seal.
Ants have a large impact on other animals, such as the aphid. Aphids feed on plant sap and when they do so, it creates a liquid called honeydew, which the ants will extract from the aphid and drink. Ants will then fend off intruders for the aphids in return.
