Fun Fact: Black garden ants build intricate underground tunnels and chambers extending several meters. Their tunnels house their colonies, store food, and protect them from predators.
The black garden ant commonly lives in European grasslands. These black ants have glossy ebony bodies that span only 3 to 5 millimeters, blending well with the undergrowth. Despite their size, their colonies can house 15,000 individuals, each with a role in their complex societal structure.
Regarding their diet, you'll find these ants foraging for fruit, other insects, and nectar. However, they have formed a unique relationship with aphids, "farming" them for their sweet honeydew secretions, similar to how humans rear cattle. This practice helps regulate aphid populations (similar to the ladybug who loves aphids, too).
Their worker ants also create nests in the soil, often under stones or grassy areas. These nesting ants shelter the ants and aerate the soil as they build.
Fun Fact: The bullet ant has the most painful sting among all insects worldwide. People have compared its sting to being shot, hence its name. According to the Schmidt sting pain index, the Bullet Ant sting pain can last up to 24 hours.
The bullet ant builds colonies at the foot of trees, and they do not have a queen. Instead, female ants lay eggs that become workers.
Bullet ants have keen vision and smell, which help them track intruders over long distances, find food, and navigate the forest. They eat small arthropods, nectar, and plant juices, controlling pest populations and aerating the soil.
Fun Fact: Carpenter ants chew through wood and create tunnel systems inside the hollow.
Despite chewing wood, Carpenter Ants do not eat wood. They carve up decaying wood and build homes inside them; they do not require wood particles to survive. Moreover, carpenter ants are nocturnal, weakening wood without detection.
Moreover, carpenter ants are natural foragers, traveling up to 100 yards in search of insects, proteins, and sugars. Carpenter ants also practice trophallaxis, where they share food and fluids. In addition, the carpenter ant builds satellite colonies to house their young.
Fun Fact: Tawny crazy ants often display erratic and unpredictable behavior, which explains their name. They perform quick and unexpected movements, giving the impression that they are agitated or like a child on a sugar rush.
Crazy ants originate from Africa but have since spread globally to tropical and subtropical regions1. These ants can thrive in dry and moist environments, although they prefer the latter. Moreover, they are curious about electronic devices and often live inside them, causing short circuits.
Unlike other ants, they have multiple queens that govern over "supercolonies." Combined with their rapid breeding, their social structure makes them difficult to eradicate. They eat insects, seeds, fruits, and human leftovers.
Fun Fact: Fire ants are not native to North America. In the early 1900s, they arrived by accident from South America through the delivery of shipping materials. Consequently, fire ants have spread rapidly and become a pest in many parts of the US. Moreover, seeing fire ant mounds indicates an ant infestation.
Fire ants are aggressive, dark, reddish-brown ants. Their name, "fire ant," refers to their bright color and their sting, which causes a burning sensation2. These ants build their nests in sunny areas that mimic small hills. In urban settings, they build nests in lawns, some of which run two meters underground with multiple entry and exit points. Fire ants eat plant matter, seeds, and other insects.
As invasive creatures, fire ants threaten small animals and other local wildlife. When threatened, they relentlessly sting their prey and intruders. Moreover, fire ant venom causes burning pain and abscess formation. Likewise, fire ants attack as one, stinging the intruder all over its body.
Fun Fact: Unlike most ants that scavenge for food, leafcutter ants cut and transport pieces of leaves to their nests. The ants use the leaves as a substrate to grow a specific type of fungus, their primary food source. Moreover, the ants remove harmful molds or bacteria from their "farms."
Leafcutter ants also carry leaf fragments in a distinct pattern along a well-traveled path. They predominantly live in warmer climates, such as South and Central America, Mexico, and the southern US. However, their behavior can strip entire fields of vegetation, causing problems for agriculture.
Fun Fact: Odorous house ants produce an unpleasant smell when crushed; their odor is like a mix of rotten coconut and blue cheese.
These ants live in the varied terrains of North America. Despite their size, they can survive in the soil under rocks, logs, carpets, and walls.
Moreover, adult ants will eat dead insects, sweet confections, dairy, meat, vegetables, and honeydew from aphids, scale insects, and mealybugs. Odorous house ants also follow a network of trails–indoors and outdoors–to find food and nest around hot water pipes and heaters.
Fun Fact: Pharaoh ants can form large supercolonies, a network of interconnected nests covering entire buildings. If you spot a Pharaoh ant in your kitchen, that means there are thousands of them nearby.
This Ant is native to Africa but has spread worldwide. Its love for warm and humid places has made it a major pest in hospitals, hotels, and apartment buildings. Moreover, it can transmit disease and contaminate objects. You should call ant control to handle an ant invasion.
These ants live in multi-queen colonies with hundreds of queens and thousands of workers. Since they have no territorial instinct, they merge colonies. They also have a unique "budding" behavior.
Fun Fact: Sugar ants, true to their name, love sugary substances. While looking for sweets, they form long chains to transport their haul back to their colonies. If you see a procession of worker ants leading to spilled soda or cookie crumbs, you are most likely seeing sugar ants at work.
The sugar ant originates from Australia and can adapt to urban and forest environments. Moreover, it is a nocturnal insect with a light orange coat and a dark head and abdomen. Despite their name, sugar ants do not limit themselves to sweet foods and will also consume dead insects or sip on nectar.
During the spring and early summer, winged queens leave their colonies to establish new territories. Sugar Ants will make their homes in rocks, soil, wood, or twigs. While these ants may appear harmless, they fight fiercely to protect their homes.
Fun Fact: As a defense strategy, acrobat ants lift their abdomen above their head to fend off predators.
Acrobat ants have heart-shaped abdomens that help them arch their abdomens over their head and body in a perfect backbend when they sense danger. Moreover, they emit a foul smell when upset.
There are also 400 acrobat ants worldwide, including 30 in North America. They can build their nests in forests, backyards, or rotting wood. Additionally, they can occupy abandoned ant nests. These ants are hunters and farmers, feeding on insects and tending to aphids for the honeydew they produce. They control pests and do organic recycling.
A python (top) and rattlesnake illustrating the positions of the pit organs. Arrows pointing to the pit organs are red; a black arrow points to the nostril.
The ability to sense infrared thermal radiation evolved independently in three different groups of snakes, consisting of the families of Boidae (boas), Pythonidae (pythons), and the subfamily Crotalinae (pit vipers). What is commonly called a pit organ allows these animals to essentially "see" radiant heat at wavelengths between 5 and 30 μm. The more advanced infrared sense of pit vipers allows these animals to strike prey accurately even in the absence of light, and detect warm objects from several meters away. It was previously thought that the organs evolved primarily as prey detectors, but recent evidence suggests that it may also be used in thermoregulation and predator detection, making it a more general-purpose sensory organ than was supposed.
The scientific name of the moose is Alces alces. However, other countries don't call them "moose." In British English, these majestic animals are more commonly called "elk." The largest moose population is in Canada, whose residents call them rubber-nosed swamp donkeys.
The term "elk" comes from the Old Norse word "elgr," which various European languages later adopted to refer to this animal. When European settlers arrived in North America, they met the indigenous Algonquin people who called the animal "moose" or "smoosh," which means twig-eater or stripper and eater of bark.
This naming inconsistency has caused some confusion. In North American English, "elk" refers to a completely different species of deer, scientifically known as Cervus Canadensis. North American elk, also called wapiti, share a few similarities with moose, such as antlers and herbivorous diet. However, they are smaller in size and have a distinct appearance.
It’s easy to understand why people confuse bison and buffalo. Both are large, horned, oxlike animals of the Bovidae family. There are two kinds of bison, the American bison and the European bison, and two forms of buffalo, water buffalo and Cape buffalo. However, it’s not difficult to distinguish between them, especially if you focus on the three H’s: home, hump, and horns.
From among the number of fruits available in the different parts of the world, there are some fruits which can be put under different categories, namely,
Citrus fruits/Subtropical fruits
Tropical fruits
Yellow fruits
Green fruits
Understanding the differences between roosters and hens is crucial for anyone raising chickens. While they share many similarities, certain traits and behaviors set them apart. This guide will help you identify whether your chicken is a rooster or a hen, distinguish the sex of your chicks, and understand the differences across various breeds.
Playing brain games is an entertaining way to improve your cognitive abilities. To challenge your brain, try this spot-the-difference puzzle where you must identify at least three differences between two almost identical images in just 15 seconds.Read Less
Curious about plantains, the banana look-alikes in grocery stores? Here's a guide to the differences between plantains vs. bananas, including the most delicious ways to eat both fruits.
The terms "training" and "education" are often used interchangeably. While both processes aim to enhance an individual's knowledge and skills, they differ significantly in their scope, objectives, characteristics, and approaches. The blog tries to cover the main differences between education and training.
Creativity is the process of generating original and novel ideas, emphasising imagination and ideation. On the other hand, innovation focuses on applying these creative ideas to develop new or improved products, services, or processes, highlighting the importance of practical implementation and value creation.
Creativity is about “Imagination”, while Innovation is about “Implementation”. Creativity imagines the impossible, turning "what if" into "what is," innovation tackles practical challenges, transforming creative visions into tangible solutions that redefine our experiences and possibilities.
Let's take an instance where you are envisioning an AI that could understand emotions from text. This is a leap of creativity, imagining machines with empathy. Innovation makes it real by developing algorithms that analyze sentiment, creating AI that can gauge and respond to human feelings in customer service.
