All You Need to Know About Ants: the First Instalment

Among bugs in general, ants are probably the least offensive All the ants I've come in contact with don't have long spider-legs, they don't eat your plants, most can't fly, and the ones who can only do so during mating, they're usually small and they don't bite or sting. In fact I'm even fond of them. I had an ant friend who lived in my family room and would crawl onto my lap to read scriptures with me for three nights in a row, no matter how many times I flicked him away. With these sentiments as my guide it is unlikely that I would be an advocate of ant extermination products. However, I understand that ants can be a nuisance and, while they ought to be appreciated, shouldn't be allowed to take over our world. With that in mind, I would like to discuss some of the unique and interesting characteristics of ants to increase the overall appreciation of them as organisms in our world, and then I would like to end with some information on how to get rid of those that have chosen inappropriate dwelling places.

Communication

I'm sure you've noted the ability ants have to successfully invade a picnic lunch or a discarded item of food. In fact, perhaps you've seen how they all tend to follow the same trail from anthill to food and back again. The path is marked by pheromones, chemicals that each ant secretes. The pheromones are picked up by the antennae of other ants. It works kind of like dogs and their sense of smell. But that's not all, ants use pheromones to communicate all kinds of things including:

• Warnings

When an ant is crushed, it secretes pheromones that, when present in high concentrations causes other ants to go into an attack frenzy. When this pheromone is present in low concentrations it merely attracts other ants to it. I imagine the effects of this pheromone would help protect the colony from harmful invaders. If the invader has already killed a lot of ants, the ants that are still alive will attack it, but if the invader has only accidentally killed one or two, the other ants will just be attracted to the place where it is, and they may scare it away.

• Health

Some pheromones are passed through food and they let other ants know information concerning the health and nutrition of the ant from which the pheromone came.

• Social Status

Ants can detect what job another ant has in the colony by one of the pheromones it secretes. The queen secretes a pheromone that lets other ants know that there is a queen present. If she didn't secrete this pheromone, the other ants would raise a new queen.

Teaching Behavior

A behavior that is fairly rare in the animal kingdom, being found only in primates and some other mammals, and that is exhibited by ants, is interactive teaching. Experienced ants will guide inexperienced ones along the paths marked by pheromones, even though it is very time consuming. The guide will speed up if the other ant gets too close, and will slow down if the other ant lags too far behind. The follower will do the opposite, and in this way she learns a lot more than she would if she were left to figure it out on her own.

How They Fit Into Our World

Unlike many other bugs, ants are not harmful to your garden. They can actually help, in fact, by aerating the soil. This one advantageous aspect aside, they are a nuisance. They get inside your house, if you or your child steps on their colony they will crawl all over you, and they tend to take over the area they live in. For these reasons people find it beneficial to exterminate them. This can be done in a number of ways, one being a pest control product. Some products are specifically labelled "ant killer" and these are very effective in relieving you of your ant problem.

Emily Lyon is a client account specialist at 10x Marketing. Take care of your ant and other pest control problems today by visiting Do My Own Pest Control.