Ant Colony facts
While investigating facts about Ant Colony Optimization and Ant Colony Algorithm, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Ants will refuse “medical” help from their colony if they know they are mortally wounded. Rather than waste the colony’s resources and energy on futile rehabilitation, the wounded ant flails its legs forcing help to abandon them.
how ant colony works?
A colony of ants with no queen, no males and no offspring, comprised entirely of non-reproductive females, that live in a disused nuclear bunker in Poland. The colony is supplemented by ants falling through holes in the ventilation which cannot escape.
What does an ant colony look like?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what is ant colony optimization. Here are 50 of the best facts about Ant Colony Game and Ant Colony Structure I managed to collect.
what happens to an ant colony when the queen dies?
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Ants can accidentally misinterpret the chemical trails left by other ants and start walking in circles. If too many members of the colony join in, it can kill the whole colony in what is sometimes known as the 'Death Spiral'
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Ants can combine multiple colonies into "Supercolonies" which contain multiple queens. One of the largest on record included an estimated 306 million worker ants and one million queen ants living in 45,000 interconnected nests.
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In 2009, scientists discovered that a single, ant mega-colony had colonized much of the world on a scale rivaled only by human civilization, including 1 super colony spanning 3,700 miles along the Mediterranean coast.
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Argentine ants have a worldwide mega-colony, and if they get in an airplane and travel to a different continent, they will be welcomed in the foreign branch of the colony
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Hero ants. These ants live in cliffs/high places and latch onto intruders of the colony. They then fling themselves off the cliff, taking the intruder with them.
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There is a species of ant that will infiltrate a fire ant colony, kill the queen, then take her place. The workers raise the impostor's children, which then fly off to infest more colonies. They are being considered as a biological method to control the spread of fire ants.
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A study showed that 2.6% of Ants in a colony are always active. Over 25% are observed to never be working, and 71.9% are inactive half of the time.
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Ants can get caught in a circular pheromone trail, so that the whole colony pinwheels forever until they die.
Why does ant colony die when queen dies?
You can easily fact check why does killing the queen ant kill the colony by examining the linked well-known sources.
There is a bizarre colony of displaced Ants living in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker
Concrete was poured into an ant colony, and then excavated. It spanned 50 sq meters underground, and went 8 meters deep. - source
Marauder ants have a special class of "supermajors" which they will ride like a bus to work, or into battle like elephant Calvary. These large class of ants in the colony serve as living heavy duty tools for the much smaller workers. - source
Ants use "social immunization" – if one is infected with a fungus, they still lick the ant, spreading it throughout the colony. This practice both kills some of the spores, and builds immune resistance.
Emergence, the phenomenon of complex systems, like ant colonies and cells, coming from simpler pieces. - source
What happens to an ant colony when the queen dies?
There is a species of ant that breeds none of it's own workers, but instead steals eggs from other ant species, forcing them into slavery to work and feed their colony.
How ant colony optimization works?
19th century biologist Sir John Lubbock experimented on ants by getting them drunk. He discovered that sober ants would carry their drunken ant comrades back to their nest, if they were from the same colony but they would throw drunk strangers into the ditch.
Argentine ants in Europe have taken over a 3,700-mile stretch of coast along the Mediterranean Sea. This single colony is the largest ever discovered and it’s wider than Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
A particular species of beetle infiltrates ant colonies by mimicking the sounds that the queen makes, and then moves around the colony at will, preying on ants, and is "treated like royalty", according to a study.
Some ants develop as 'undertakers,' carrying dead bodies and waste away from the colony, and exhibit different behavioral patterns than the rest of the colony.
The fanged pitcher plant and the carpenter ant have a mutualistic relationship whereby the plant’s stem provides a home for small colonies of ants who in turn keep the chemistry of the pitcher’s liquid balanced by removing large insects from inside, preventing the liquid from spoiling.