For those of you who don’t spend at least 20 minutes a day thinking about how cool ants are, let me just say: You’re what’s wrong with this world.

I even made a song about ants called ‘The Kingdom of Ants’. I suppose it should have been 'Queendom of Ants'… but anyway, back to the point.

Ants are really, really cool. They’ve made the odd cameo in my previous nature posts, but I felt the need to dedicate a whole 1,000 words on them, on what they can do, on how badass they can be, on what they can teach us and more. So here we go:

There are many, many ants.

Over 10,000,000,000,000,000 (10 quadrillion) individuals, according to estimates. Ants are one of the most successful creatures on the planet. Not only have they managed to cover every continent except Antarctica (though maybe they have an underground military base there, who knows), but also every country except Greenland.

There are over 15,000 species of ant spread around everywhere, and they’ve all adapted to thrive in all conditions. You’d think most of that is thanks to humans transporting them around, but you’ll actually discover using this alarmingly convenient interactive map of ants, that in most places there is at least one species native to that location, even remote islands.

Of course, that’s not to say we didn’t give them a helping hand spreading their domination, like the fire ants:

But hey-ho.

Mega colonies

Colonies of ants would traditionally fight over resources and land, that’s just the way of the world. But it seems most ants have actually given up on this tradition. And started to form super colonies.

These are obviously just huge colonies, but we need some perspective.

One ant colony was found to have 306 million workers, and a million queens in Hokkaido, Japan. These ants were interconnected with underground passages between 45,000 separate nests spreading almost 3 square kilometers.

Soon after, in 2000, this record was blown out of the nest with a super colony of Argentine ants in Southern Europe that managed to spread over 6,000 square kilometers. Their population exceeded billions, connecting millions of nests.

But the story is not done yet. In 2009, separate super colonies from Japan, the US and Europe were all found to be part of a giant, global mega colony.

That (thankfully) doesn’t mean they dug tunnels under the oceans, but according to a paper forebodingly titled ‘The global expansion of a single ant supercolony’, when tested, there was absolutely no aggression between any ants from any part of any colonies in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Europe and more.

If multiple ant species wasn’t enough, the Argentine ant alone has managed to conquer six continents.

But thankfully, ants haven’t entirely ironed out their differences. For example, the Californian super colony still has beef with a second colony in the same area, as well as some in South Africa. But when they join up…Well, I warned you.

Ants are old

According to Harvard and FSU, ants in their current form have been found as far back as the mid-cretaceous period, 130 million years ago. They survived numerous mass extinction events, no sweat!

They’re big… and small

Ants range from a tiny 2mm in length like the cute Pharaoh ant, all the way up to a couple of inches like the African Driver ant (possibly named due to it being big enough to reach the gas pedal) and, more notoriously, the Bullet ant.

Bullet ants

I don’t think we should underestimate these guys. The bullet ant gets its name from the pain its sting causes. Those who fall victim to it liken the pain of a single sting to being shot with a bullet, but for 24 solid hours. It is the most painful sting in the world. To get some perspective, feel free to watch this man willingly sting himself to experience the pain:

Not to be defeated, mankind decided to raise the bar a little more, however. There are villages out there that fill entire ant-gloves with bullet ants, and one must put their hand inside for a few minutes, getting repeatedly stung as some kind of sick rite of passage. I think I’d rather be shot by – oh wait.

Farmers, thieves and slave owners

In my previous nature post, I showed how ants were human long before humans were. But this is true even more than I first let on:

• They farm. There are species of ant that grow and farm fungi, and others that farm aphids. By clipping the aphid’s wings and literally drugging them, the ants can keep them in place and feed them like cattle. The aphids then secrete a delicious sugary snack for the ants to enjoy.

Fijian ants take this one step further by planting crops and building entire plant cities to grow tropical fruits for themselves.

• Many species of ant practice ‘dulosis’ – a process in which they raid another nest, steal the babies and raise them as slaves. Some species completely depend on this process and are unable to even sustain themselves without maintaining slave culture.

You know what, ants are so cool that I’m going to break this into two parts. There’s just too much to fit into a single post. Next time I’ll look in more detail at specific breeds of ants, as well as some of their fascinating behavior caught all over the world.

Sources:
Mega Colony paper
Alarmingly convenient interactive ant map

Image sources:
Fiji ants
European super colony
Size chart

Previously:

Convergence
Stupid Design
Weird Evolution
The Axolotl
Mutual Symbiosis
Parasitic Symbiosis Part 1
Parasitic Symbiosis Part 2
Deception
Weird Sex Part 1
Weird Sex Part 2
Humanity in Nature