As I already made crystal clear, ants and pretty amazing. You can read more generally about their amazing ANTics in part one (see below), but today I want to go more into the specific wonders of individual species, and what better ant to start off with than:

Leafcutter ants

The largest single colony ever found (not including the super and mega colonies from the previous post) goes to leafcutter ants.

To fully appreciate their size, 'experts' found an entrance into a colony and started pouring 10 tons of concrete inside over ten days. Once dry, they had to remove 40 tons of soil to see what can only be described as a Megalopolis:

This nest (fortunately abandoned pre-concrete) reached 26 feet underground, with a total size of 500 square feet.

Why so big?

Each area has a different purpose, from trash rooms and toilets to egg and larvae storage rooms. Leafcutter ants fill individual job roles in those rooms, depending on their size at birth and overall have the most complex social system of all aside from humans.

Many of those jobs revolve around the most important place of all: The Fungus Garden. Here is a selection of the wide variety of job titles dedicated to the leaves in the colony:

• Holders (hold the leaf)
• Lickets (licking unwanted stuff away)
• Scrapers (improves fungal growth)
• Large cutters (breaking the leaf down)
• Small cutters (breaking the leaf down even more)
• Puncturer (aids fungus in getting inside the leaf fragments)
• Pesticider (adds chemicals from abdomen to break the leaf down)
• Cacher (stores leaf fragments)
• Inserter (when processed, these fragments go into a large wall)
• Inoculator (putting old fungus onto new leaf fragments)
• Quality control (makes sure it's alllll good)

Honeypot ants

Rather than create leafy, low-nutrition storage facilities that grow even less nutritious fungus, the honeypot ants create a storage room where a selection of ants sit around gorging all day until they bloat up to the size of a grape, full of sugary honeydew.

When regular food sources are low, workers come to their honeypot slaves and stroke their antennae, which stimulates the fat git to release some beautiful sugar from is morbidly obese abdomen.

The ants are so tasty that even humans, in particular the aboriginal Australians make these ants a part of their diet, and to be honest, my saliva is starting to build up.

These are not the only tasty ants, mind you. The green weaver ant, for example is a rich source of vitamin C and have a sour taste, somewhat like candy, but incredibly healthy. Some ant larvae in Thailand even create a market worth over 600,000 USD as a delicacy.

mmmmm.

Disgusting ants

Ok, many of you may already think ants are disgusting. Clearly you're not listening to me. But there are ants that are literally disgusting to other ants, to their great advantage.

The Formicoxenus nitidulus ant does not want to do any work, choosing the life of a parasite instead. But rather than hiding its scent with excessive licking and other techniques, it covers its body with a layer of repulsive chemicals.

By doing this, it manages to be more successful at parasitism than any other species, with the capacity to take over colonies of 11 separate species of ant. These host ants won't attack for long, because as soon as they get a grip, the foul taste of this sleazy ant forces them to let go and give them free reign.

Game of Ants

Almost no ant can stop the unstoppable force of the Argentine ants responsible for the global mega colonies discussed before, They're adaptable and strong.

But I did say almost. Needle ants are ant eaters, and they are also very adaptable in cold climates, like Russians. so Argentine ants, like Brits, are pretty terrified of them. NEEDLEss to say, the needle ants are the only species that have managed to fight back and even conquer Argentine ants.

Fire ants are another invasive species with an arch nemesis, the aptly named 'Crazy ant'. Unlike other ants who flee in fear of fire ants, the crazy ant, when stung, simply sprays itself with its own poison, neutralizing the effects of the sting. With this defense, crazy ants are managing to destroy Fire ant colonies, keeping them in their place as second best.

Who will win?? In my opinion, probably the...

Army ants

Army ants are well known for several things, but they're mostly famous for being the Golden Hoard of the ant kingdom. These ants are brutal. They're fast. They're powerful, and they swarm.

Considered one of the most powerful ant colonies out there, they ravage the forests floors until there's nothing left. They eat on the go, and nothing can stop them.

They take down beetles, spiders, scorpions, crabs, snakes, whatever. They can pretty much eat on the move or take small chunks back to the nest, whatever they see fit. 500,000 creatures may fall victim to a swarm of army ants per day.

The most impressive part to me is their visible organisation skills. Their raiding patterns come in two distinct forms: A) They branch off into columns with a front line where they all meet up, or B) An extensive system of columns that each act as separate swarms. These can be 20 metres wide and over 100 metres in length!

They are always on the move, so much so that they don't even have a nest. Instead, they use their own bodies to form a complex bivouac-like structure, and it's pretty wild:

Oh man. I had to make so many cuts to stop me making a part three, like bridge building ants, floating ants, altruistic sacrificial ants, acid-spraying ants and more. It's probably inevitable I'll return because it seems almost every species has something unique to talk about.

I wish I had better things to do.

Image Sources:

Leafcutters
Termite war
Honeypots
Fire ant bridge
Army ant swarms
Army ant Bivouac

Special Source; an amazing collection of ant images you should all check out

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
Amazing Ants Part 1