1. What kind of animal is an ant?
Ants are one of the three "social insects" (ants, termites and bees) in the world, belonging to Arthropoda, Insecta, Hymenoptera and Formicidae. Ants are the most abundant and widely distributed creatures on the earth. It is said that the total weight of all ants in the world will exceed the total weight of vertebrates.
2. Why are ants also called "Xuanju"?
The word "Xuanju" first appeared in Er Ya Shi Pian in the early Han Dynasty, and its original meaning refers to pony. In the later "De Li Ji", it was said: "The mysterious ones are all ants." That is to say, Xuanju is an ant, which is the earliest record that ants are called Xuanju. Li Shizhen, a medical scientist in Ming Dynasty, listed Xuanju as a traditional Chinese medicine and wrote it in Compendium of Materia Medica. The explanation of the name "ant" in the book says: "Big ants like to fight hard, so they are called ponies." The ancients called ants Xuanju, which came from long-term observation.
3. When did ants appear?
Ants have a long history. According to amber fossils embedded with the remains of ants found along the Baltic Sea, ants have a history of at least 45 million years. In fact, their ancestors can be traced back to the Mesozoic era more than 654.38 billion years ago. With the changes of environment and history, the giant dinosaurs have long been extinct, while the tiny ants rely on the collective strength to survive and reproduce, and now they have become a prosperous kingdom, ranking first among millions of terrestrial animals.
4. What shape are ants?
Ants have smooth bodies, or they are hairy, prickly, striped, reticulate, engraved and tuberculous. The body colors of ants are black, yellow, brown and red, and there are also mixed colors of emerald blue, rosewood, yellow brown and red, red and black, black and blue. Different kinds of ants vary greatly in size, usually several millimeters long. The smaller ants in the world are called "thief ants", and their body length is only about 2 mm.
5. How is the body of an ant made up?
The ant's body is divided into three parts: head, chest and abdomen. It has six legs, thin and elastic body wall, membranous wings, hard and fragile. The head varies greatly, usually wide and big. Compared with body weight, head weight is the most important among terrestrial animals. The antennae of sexual and asexual females are knee-shaped, while those of males are simple, with 4- 13 nodes. Compound eyes are small, shrink back, and occasionally not at all. Three eyes, located on the top of the head, worker ants still have no eyes. The mouthparts are developed, the upper lip is degenerated, and the upper jaw has various shapes, such as width, length and short, straight and curved, or single teeth. The mandible is normal, 1~6 joints. The inner jaw is simple. The lower lip has beard, chin, middle lip and two small side lips; Lower lip 1~4. Clear breasts. The first abdominal segment (combined with the thoracoabdominal segment and the posterior chest) healed and elongated. The abdomen is located behind the thoracoabdominal segment, and the front end of the abdomen is obviously contracted into an abdominal stalk. The abdominal stalk is one or two segments. If there are two segments, the second segment is called the posterior abdominal stalk. Each lymph node has one or two back tumors, or erect or inclined scales. The posterior segment of the stem expands to form the abdomen, which consists of 7-8 segments, and the male ant has one more segment than the female ant. There are 8 pairs of air holes in the abdomen. Some genera are vocal organs, which consist of files on the posterior abdominal stalk and friction surfaces on the first segment of the posterior stalk.
6. How many kinds of ants are there? Where are they distributed?
There are many kinds of ants, about 16000, which are widely distributed. Modern ant experts divide ants into 9 subfamilies:
(1) honey ant subfamily.
(2) False motrymenae (false motrymenae)
(3) Odorinae (Dolichoderinae)
(4) Ant subfamily
(5) Ponerinae
(6) Armillarinae
(7) Dortmlinnaeus.
(8) Leptanillinae
(9) Plantagininae
Almost all over the world, except the Antarctic, the Arctic and the snow-free peaks all year round, there are ants on land.
Ants are as hardworking as bees.
The living habits of ants should be social insects with clear division of labor. The queen's job is to lay eggs, the soldier ants are responsible for protecting the nest, and the worker ants collect food and so on.
The artificial propagation of ants needs suitable site, temperature, humidity and other environments that are conducive to the life of ants. The raised ants must undergo nutritional and pharmacological analysis to determine whether they can be eaten or used as medicine, so not all species can be farmed artificially. Experts pointed out that it is appropriate to choose Polyrhachis vicina for artificial breeding.
Live in a warm, dark and humid cave, where it is warmest in winter.
For many years, I have been teaching young people a simple but very effective concept-philosophy. I think everyone should learn from ants, because they have four amazing philosophies.
Part 1: Ants never give up. If they run somewhere and you try to stop them, they will find another route. They either climb up, go underground, or go around until they find another way. What a wonderful philosophy! Never give up, always find a route to where you want to go.
Part II: Ants plan to spend the winter in summer. What a profound insight! We can't naively think that summer will last forever, so even in midsummer, ants will take the initiative to store winter food for themselves.
An old story says, "Don't build your house on the beach in summer." Why do we need such advice? Because foresight is very important. In summer, when you enjoy the beach and sunshine, you need to consider the storm.
Part III: Ants think about summer in winter. This is very important. Throughout the winter, ants remind themselves that "winter won't be long, and we can go outside soon". So on the first day when the temperature gets warmer, ants will go out for activities. If the temperature gets cold, they will return to the cave. They don't just wait, so ants always go out on the first day when the temperature gets warmer.
The last part of ant philosophy: how much food will ants prepare for the winter all summer? Try your best to store as much food as possible. What a magical philosophy _ _ _ Go all out!
This is the whole philosophy of the big ant: never give up, forethought, take the initiative and go all out.