Ants are another group of insects that I have not given much thought to. Nor have I taken many pictures of them, simply because I have a love/ hate relationship with them.
Anyone living on the Bluff can attest to the fact that the Bluff has a huge ant population. I know they have a vital role to play within our environment and in order to have a healthy eco-system one needs to have ants in it. However it is not fun having your household invaded by ants or even waking up with thousands of them in your bed, biting you.
There is an estimated 22 000 species of ants on the earth, naturally occurring on every continent except Antarctica and a few inhospitable islands. Depending on species, ants can live in colonies of a few dozen up to many thousand or even million individuals. In some areas of the globe ants account for up to 25 per cent of the animal bio-mass in the area. It is estimated that the total mass of ants on earth is equivalent to the mass of humans, about one million ants for every human on earth.
Ant colonies mostly consist of wingless infertile females that have various occupations from foraging for food (workers) to protecting the colony (soldiers). There are also a few fertile males called drones and one or more fertile females called queens. Everything is done for the greater good of the colony. At a certain time of the year new drones and queens are born, usually with wings, they fly off to and from new colonies.
Most species of ants are omnivorous, feeding on plant and vegetable matter, but there are also those that are exclusively cadaverous or exclusively herbivorous.
The human relationship with ants
For humans, ants play a vital role in ecology from pest control agents to helping aerate the soil for crops. One of the oldest examples of humans using ants for pest controllers is of the Chinese using weaver ants in their citrus plantations. In the more rural parts of Africa and South America, large ants such as army ants are used to suture up wounds.
The wound is pulled closed, and then the ant’s jaws are placed on the wound, once clamped shut the body is cut off leaving the ants head firmly clamped on the wound until it has healed. Here in South Africa ants are used to harvest rooibos seeds. These seeds are very small and disperse over a large area. It has been found that a certain species of black ant collects these seeds for food, keeping them in an underground pantry. Humans simply have to dig up this pantry that can yield up to 200 grams of seeds at once.
Ants are an interesting group of insects and I hope this article sparks your curiosity to research these fascinating insects.
Did you know that ‘White ants’ aka ‘Termites’ are not actually ants? They are in fact a species of their own and are more closely related to cockroaches.
If you would like to contact Warren to have some of your interesting insects, snakes or other wildlife identified, send him a WhatsApp message or call him on 072-211-0353. Visit his Facebook Page called, Warren’s Small World.
