Perhaps every person saw an anthill. However, not everyone understands how complicated the structure of the anthill is - it is much more complicated than any skyscraper created by people. Here, day and night, hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of developed insects work, each of which is busy with its own business.
What is anthill
Of course, first of all, this is a building where ants live. But in addition, it is also a society. Imagine a city with a population of more than a million people, in which all residents work smoothly, without complicated meetings and decrees from above? Not the slightest glitches or errors are allowed here - for thousands of years the whole mechanism has been debugged surprisingly accurately.
What is it built from
Most people think of an anthill as a pile of garbage collected from everywhere. Yes, indeed, in the forests ants mainly build their houses from needles, pieces of bark, leaves and other improvised means. All of them are arranged amazingly carefully - not every engineer will be able to cope perfectly with this task. After all, needles, straw and other small building material are laid in such a way that during even the most severe rain only the top layer gets wet - no more than 2-3 centimeters. Most of the water neatly rolls along the surface of the anthill, without causing problems to the inhabitants.
However, in some cases, they prefer to take a ready-made rotten stump. Of course, this is only the upper part of the anthill itself. Only a few important rooms are located here, most of them are hidden deep underground - we'll talk about this later. This is no accident - in cold climates the earth warms up rather slowly, and ants, like any insects, are highly dependent on the ambient temperature. But the aboveground part of the sun's rays warm up much faster, providing comfort and high productivity to the inhabitants.
But sometimes the anthill outside looks just like a small hole in the ground. Most often, such can be seen in the steppe or desert. This is not an accident - here, if the soil freezes, it warms up very quickly - spring in such places is usually early, and summer is very hot. Therefore, it is more important for ants not to warm their housing as soon as possible, but to get rid of excess heat. Scientists have found in the deserts anthills that go 10 meters deep! There is moisture necessary for life, and the sand never warms up too much.
Main unit
Now let's move on to how the anthill works. The most noticeable layer is the protective layer. A thick layer of needles, straw or pieces of leaves, which absorbs part of the moisture, taking most of it outside the home. At the same time, it acts as a thermal cushion, protecting it from excessive overheating and overcooling. Directly under it is a kind of bathhouse - ants gather here in spring and early in the morning to warm up, restore functionality and begin daily work.
There are exits - from a few to a couple of dozen. In a desert or steppe, the distance between them can reach 2-5 meters. In an ordinary forest anthill, the exits are much more compact. They lead to common corridors connecting many chambers: a food store, a uterus shelter, a nursery for storing larvae and eggs, a cemetery, which includes dead ants, as well as waste products. Many of them are duplicated (except for the home of the uterus, it is always only one per anthill). But there may be several food depots, cemeteries, creches. This is justified for several reasons. Firstly, to make it easier to choose the right one - the one that is closer. Secondly, in case one is damaged, a few more will remain.
Now that you know how the anthill is built, a description of the individual ants is worth giving. Then each reader was able to appreciate the complexity of this society.
What do ants do
Very few people who are not seriously interested in this issue guess how the anthill works. But this is really a complex society.
To begin with, it is worth noting that all ants are divided into three groups: the uterus (she is the queen, the only one in the anthill), males (up to several dozen, needed to fertilize the uterus) and workers. It is about the latter that is worth telling in more detail.
Some experts identify up to ten specialties, which include working ants. Moreover, each of them is engaged in his own business from birth to death, has a certain structure for this. For example, soldier ants have a particularly large head - if necessary, they can clog it with a passage, not allowing the enemy to go into a long corridor. Nanny ants are distinguished by a very delicate antennae, allowing them to catch the slightest movements in pupae and eggs. The midwives who look after the queen are very similar to them. They feed it, remove waste products, stroke it, helping to lay new eggs (several thousand a day). Loader ants have a powerful neck and legs, thanks to which they lift a huge load for their body. Builders have glands that produce sticky saliva, which is used to hold building material together.
And this is not counting the highly specialized ants that are found in specific anthills, depending on the direction of their economy.
Amazing unity
After reading the structure of the anthill and a description of its inhabitants, the reader will be interested to know about their unity. The entire population acts as a single organism (this is already known to many).
But as additional information, it is worth giving a clear example. Experts have often seen how ants fight fires that engulfed their housing. They simply extinguish the fire using formic acid secreted by the working ants. Everyone is able to allocate only a miserable fraction of a milligram - such a blow does not matter to a fire. However, when tens and hundreds of thousands of individuals come into action at the same time, a small flame cannot resist - it really goes astray, goes out, without causing damage to the ant hill that it could not survive.
How does the anthill appear
When we told what structure of the anthill is most often found, it is worth mentioning how it generally appears.
Most often, the ancestor is a lone uterus. Immediately after departure from its native anthill, it is fertilized by males and flies away, for several kilometers. Here she chooses a suitable place - a rotten log, a stump, just a patch of soft, slightly moist soil. It is buried, so as not to become the prey of other insects or birds, after which it lays eggs. The young uterus takes care of the first on its own. At this time, she does not even eat. However, as soon as the first working ants hatch, everything changes. Part immediately begins to care for the queen. Others begin to build an ant hill. Still others are sent to prey to feed themselves, the uterus, as well as other relatives employed in other areas of work. Every year the anthill becomes more and more, the population is growing rapidly. Over time, young fertilized uterus will also fly out of it to repeat the whole procedure again.
Two tiers
If you study the structure of the anthill in the context of the description, you will notice that it is populated unevenly. It depends on seasonality. In summer, the upper layer (aboveground) is most densely populated, as well as the upper floors of the underground - practically do not enter the lower floors (only occasionally, in order to include part of the supplies). In the cold season, everything changes. All supplies, as well as larvae and eggs, are transported deep underground. This allows ants to avoid hypothermia - at a depth of 1-2 m it is always warmer than on a surface where the temperature can drop to -30 degrees or even lower.
Various political and economic systems
Not everyone knows, but in different anthills - depending on the breed - there may be different economic and even political systems. This is not a joke at all. Scientists have repeatedly recorded real wars between anthills. Moreover, they always provoke certain types. They attack neighbors, partially destroy the guard in order to break into the premises with eggs and larvae. Then they drag them away, growing as slaves in their own anthill - most of the work is carried out by the captured individuals, while the owners continue the aggressive wars.
There are also cases of animal husbandry. Ants really breed peculiar cows - aphids. In the mornings, they drive it out of the anthill onto the leaves, protect it from ladybirds and other dangers, and in the evenings they return it to the “stall”. For this, they get sweet milk, which causes so many problems to gardeners - because of it the leaves die.
Finally, one can see agricultural ants. They chew on small leaves, mixing in the mouth with spores of mushrooms, and then spread in special rooms where the mushrooms sprout, serve as food for the entire colony.
Biggest anthill
In some countries, anthills exist for several decades, reaching truly enormous sizes. In our forests, this happens quite rarely. But still, not so long ago, in the Tver region, scientists discovered an anthill, whose height was 3 meters with a diameter of 5 meters! Even experts found it difficult to determine how old this giant is.
How to see everything with your own eyes?
Many parents, noticing the interest of their children in ants, are wondering how to demonstrate the structure of the ant hill to their children. Of course, you can watch various programs, but this is not at all the case.
Fortunately, special ant farms, or formicaria , can now be easily found on sale. They can be made of various materials. It is enough to plant the found uterus here, from time to time to feed it with insects, sugar syrup or other suitable products. After a few months, you will become the owner of your own anthill. Transparent walls make it possible to see everything that happens inside. Keeping track of it is very interesting for both children and adults. A common interest will surely bring your family together and help you find a new topic for communication.
Conclusion
This concludes our article. From it you learned about the structure of the anthill - the photos attached to the article allowed you to learn more about this amazing world, which most people, alas, do not pay attention. But in vain. Tiny ants have a lot to learn. However, this is the topic of a completely different article ...