ANTS: Small but Terrible

I recently watched the movie “The Bugs Life” and I became curious about the life and existence of those ants. Although they look bigger in the screen, they are very tiny in real life. And as I go to our backyard I saw a colony of ants and I wonder where they came from. They seem like very disciplined because people will always saw them walking and working always falling in line. As I browse through the web (because they really captured my curiosity), I found out that ants have been living in this Earth for over 100 million years.

Also, there are approximated 20,000 various species of ants and they were called as the most thriving species here on Earth. They also build several types of homes. Most of them construct little mountains out of sand or dirt, just what I saw on our backyard. Other use small sticks combined with sand and dirt to have stronger mountain that provides protection from rain.

Ants are insects and they are categorizing as social insects, which means that they live in big groups or colonies. Some of the groups or colonies of ants are consist of millions of ants. As I browse more about this tiny insect, I found out that there are only three kinds in each species of ants, the queen, the males and the sterile female workers.

Because ants were very tiny, I also search for their anatomy and they only have three major parts. Amazing isn’t it? These little insects compose of head, trunk and metasoma or rear. They also have six legs that are attach to their trunks. The ants’ head composes of eyes, jaws and antennae. Even though they were small, the eyes of ants are also composing of several lenses that enable them to see other movements very well.

What really amaze me is that their antennae have special functions and act as special organs for hearing, tasting, touching and smelling (all together in one part). The last part was the rear, which consists of their rectum and stomach. Another thing that really amazes me is that fact that ants do not have lungs. Yes they do not have an organ for breathing, but how can do they live? They do not have lungs because the oxygen enters in the small holes all throughout their body and the carbon dioxide leaves through that same holes.

Even though these insects were really small, they know how to communicate well with each others. Impressively, they use their antennae and touch each other. They also use some sort of chemicals called pheromones to leave their scent traces for other ants to follow. They were really amazing right? So what moral lesson can you get from these little insects? Simple, they show us real discipline by simply falling in line and they communicate well, which is very important in any aspects. They also work hard that some of us were lacking. Till next time 