How Do Ants Survive the Winter? A Detailed Explanation of Ant Winter Survival Methods
Ants are one of the most common animals in our daily lives. As long as you bend down in front of or behind the house, you can always find a couple of little ants. It is said that ants also have the ability to forecast weather. Whenever rain is coming, the strange phenomenon of ants moving their nest appears. So how do ants survive the winter?
I. How Ants Survive the Winter
Before winter arrives, ants carry various kinds of food back to the ant nest to store up for the winter. When the temperature drops to a certain level, ants no longer go out to forage and stay in the nest with almost no activity, so as to reduce the consumption of various bodily functions and lower their metabolism. When hungry, they eat the stored food. In addition, ants may also spend the winter in the same burrow with aphids, scale insects, lycaenid butterfly larvae and other animals. These animals can secrete honeydew, so that ants can still eat some nutritious sweet food in winter.
Ants can grow normally within 15-40°C, but the optimal temperature is between 25-30°C. However, every spring, after the stored food is used up, ants will also come out to move about at low temperatures. But the first thing ants do when they leave the nest is to divide up spheres of influence, to prevent invasion by ants from other nests. For ants, land is the most important source of food. In order to carve up the land so they can search for food, ants will even wage war.
II. Characteristics of Ants
Ants are highly social, and the division of labor in an ant nest is very clear. Generally, the ants in a nest are divided into queens, males, workers and soldiers. The queen's main duty is to lay eggs and reproduce offspring. When the colony is small, she also serves functions such as guarding the nest, feeding, and caring for eggs and larvae. Male ants are mainly responsible for mating, but they die shortly after mating, leaving the “widow” queen to live a lonely life on her own. Worker ants are females without reproductive capacity, and their main duties are building and expanding the nest, collecting food, and feeding larvae and the queen. Soldier ants can cut up food, become weapons in battle when defending the colony, and also serve as tools for storing grain in the colony.
Ants are known to have first appeared in the Cretaceous Period, and may have evolved from primitive wasps that appeared in the Jurassic Period. There are extremely many species, and several dozen are known in China. Today they have high medicinal value. Beverages made from ants and alcohol can help with skincare and anti-inflammation, anti-aging and relieving asthma.
The above is some relevant knowledge about ants. The powerful social nature of ants can be said to be miniature human dynasties one after another. If they were a little smarter, there might be nothing left for humans.