Category: Amazing Insects

There are many colonies of ants of the same species that can be found at war with one another. Although they are of the same species, they have difficulty with being peaceful with each other. That is because they distinguish friend and foe through pheromones. Each colony has its own pheromone, causing ants to see all others as enemies.

However, there are a number of ants that have overcome this barrier of separation between colonies of the same species. The yellow crazy ant and the red fire ant are just a few examples of this behavior. Multiple queens band together, producing thousands upon thousands of ants everyday. This phenomenon is known as a supercolony, where ants coming from different queens band together in order to survive.

Polymorphism is an important aspect in termites and ants. It helps to determine their function and what they are able to do. In both ants and termites, there are not that many differences in what the larger and smaller counterparts perform. Larger insects entities tend to perform guard duty or act as a defense. Smaller insects tend to do the rest of the work. And, obviously, there are differences between termites and ants.

Large termites are simply called soldier termites. They are unable to perform small menial tasks due to their enlarged head and mandibles. However, large ants are able to do much more. Larger ants, known as supermajors, also help the worker ants with transporting large food products, either carrying it themselves or cutting up the prey into smaller pieces. In some species, such as the asian marauder ant, the supermajors are used as a form of transport for the workers to conserve energy.

Most organisms perform many tasks in their lifetime. The more independent the species is, the more tasks they must perform each day. On the other hand, if the species relies more and more heavily on each other rather than their own individual ability, tasks are handed out generously — much like employees in a large corporation, potentially requiring many hands for a single task.

This is how eusocial (colony-forming) insects operate: having hundreds upon hundreds of ants performing a single task. In most cases, the older members of the colony will travel outside the nest, looking for food or disposing of waste products, while the younger members typically remain inside the safety of the nest. This method ensures that the younger generation will be able to replace the older generation when the older members have died of old age or from predators. If the younger generation is killed from going outside, there would be a drop in population as the older generation dies of age with no replacements.

In a sense, these insects have formed a caste system based on age where younger insects perform safer tasks and older insects perform must more dangerous tasks. In ants and termites, the larger ones perform guard duty, protecting the valuable queen and brood/larvae as well as their fellow workers.

Out of the many insects in the world, very few are known for their building skills. Most people acknowledge the building of webs by spiders or the building of hives by bees or wasps. But of all of these creatures, the termite stands at the pinnacle of construction.

Their mounds can go up to 5 meters or 17 feet in height, potentially stretching even further if the colony is large enough. These structures are constructed with soil, mixed with sand and other organic matter. To stick it all together, the termite workers use their saliva and allow the saliva-infused soil harden. Although these mounds may seem just for show, they actually have a purpose. The reason they stand so tall is to create a network of air-exchange between the deeper parts of the nest and the surface, allowing them to dig even further down without needing to worry about a loss of oxygen.

We humans pride ourselves with creating massive structures that tower over anything insects can create. But we forget how we rely heavily on the use of machinery to even construct a house. Termites, on the other hand, do everything with their bare hands. Well, in their case, it’d be their mandibles.

Similar in size and behavior of an ant, the termite is sometimes known as the white ant. However, its actual body-shape makes it more of a relative to the cockroach than anything. These little creatures make their home in dead wood or underground, giving them a medium with which they can use to continue to build/hollow-out their nest. Their diet is composed mainly of cellulose, a fibrous molecule humans cannot digest that is found in plants, which they break down in their bodies using bacteria. Unlike the ant, termites more orientated for defending the colony have significantly larger, darker heads while workers are much more fragile, maintaining a pale body color.