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The army ants of South America, such as the Eciton burchellii species, and the driver ants of Africa do not build permanent nests, but instead, alternate between nomadism and stages where the workers form a temporary nest from their own bodies, by holding each other together.
Ants as a colony also work as a collective "super mind". Ants can compare areas and solve complex problems by using information gained by each member of the colony to find the best nesting site or to find food. [2] Some social-parasitic species of ants, known as the slave-making ant, raid and steal larvae from neighboring colonies. [19]
Because of this, ants are a popular source of inspiration for design in software engineering, robotics, industrial design, and other fields involving many simple parts working together to perform complex tasks. [2] The most popular current model of self-organization in ants and other social insects is the response threshold model.
Most organisms forage, hunt, or use photosynthesis to get food, but around 50 million years ago — long before humans were around — ants began cultivating and growing their own food.
Ants communicating through touch. Ant communication in most species involves pheromones, which is a method using chemical trails for other ants or insects to find and follow. [1] However, ants of some species can communicate without using pheromones or chemical trails in general.
Colonies of real army ants always have only one queen, while some other ant species can have several queens. The queen is dichthadiigyne (a blind ant with large gaster) but may sometimes possess vestigial eyes. [5] The queens of army ants are unique in that they do not have wings, have an enlarged gaster size and an extended cylindrical abdomen ...
Sugar bait with a toxicant, such as boric acid, typically works well, since many ant species that enter homes are sweet-loving ants. This will work slowly as foraging ants take food back to the queen.
Honey ants are unique in using their own bodies as living storage, used later by their fellow ants when food is otherwise scarce. When the liquid stored inside a honeypot ant is needed, the worker ants stroke the antennae of the honeypot ant, causing the honeypot ant to regurgitate the stored liquid from its crop. [4] [5]
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