Facts On Ants

 Ten Myths About Ants You Shouldn't Believe
 

1. Seeing a Single Ant Does Not Indicate The Presence of an Infestation
 
This outdated perception is actually completely false. Ever notice how ants move in straight lines? This specific action is a result of ants leaving behind an invisible chemical trail that serves as a sign to other ants that they have discovered a food source and effectively leads them there. Therefore, seeing one ant can indicate that thousands are actually present and ready to follow it into your house.

 
2. Termites and Ants Cannot Coexist

Despite this being the case most of the time, this is not an established rule in the insect world. Both termites and ants can be aggressive and have even been known to fight in the wild. However, depending on the species and the territory involved, conflict may occasionally not even arise. For instance, termites have destroyed the siding and decks of some large homes while a colony of ants enters the house from the opposite side and hangs out near the kitchen, allowing the termites and ants to coexist together there.

 
3. Club Soda Is a Powerful Home Ant Control Method

Yes, carbon dioxide does kill ants, and at high concentrations, it can be a highly powerful pesticide. Club soda is useless when used in homes or when poured over or into ant hills because the concentration required is far higher than what is found in club soda.

 
4. Using Chalk Lines Will Keep Ants Out of Your House

Chalk doesn't truly do anything extraordinary to keep ants away. The basic reality underlying the myth as a whole is that numerous things, including chalk, can obstruct ants' scent trails. However, these methods are usually ineffectual because the scent trail still exists on the other side of the line, making it easy for ants to just cross the chalk or find another way around and resume their raid on the pantry in your home.
 

5. Carpenter Ants Consume The Wooden Materials of Your House

This widespread myth claims that termites and carpenter ants behave similarly. They may destroy houses and other wooden structures in a similar manner, but they don't eat the wood. They are more interested in tunneling to build nests so they can leave trails of dust and debris in their wake rather than anything else.
 

6. Vinegar is a Powerful Homemade Ant Control Method
 
Ants don't like the scent of vinegar very much. Although some publications assert that sprinkling vinegar on your floors and doors would eradicate ants, this is a myth. They may be marginally deterred and their original smell track may be slightly altered, at most. Ants are tenacious insects, though, and they'll find a way into your house regardless. The extremely minimal efficiency of this is therefore greatly overshadowed by the needless vinegar odor and the results' brief duration.

 
7. Oatmeal Detonates Inside Ants

This myth's explanation is based on the idea that ants have slender digestive tracts. According to legend, if an ant consumes oats and then drinks water, the oats will swell and put extreme pressure on its short digestive tract, finally causing it to break. However, this is untrue. Surprisingly, it is believed that the root of this story lies in a former method of professional pest management wherein insecticides were applied to oats and then returned to the colony where they slowly killed the ant population.

 
8. Ant Colonies Will Be Destroyed by Boiling Water

The use of such highly hot water for this do-it-yourself ant control method might be very inconvenient or even dangerous in addition to being somehow useless. The process involves locating the precise ant hill that is invading your home, boiling the water, carrying the hot water to the colony in a safe manner, and finally defusing the hill. Even if everything goes off without a hitch, only the exposed ants and any ants that are at the very top of the hill's interior tunnels will be harmed by this attack. The queen and a sizable portion of the colony will still be buried deep within the tunnels by the time the water can seep through the earth to reach these depths, and it will no longer be boiling. A sizable section of the colony is frequently absent from the hill at the moment, and when it returns, it starts to repair the harm the water caused.

 
9. You Can Use Cinnamon And Lemons to Prevent Ants From Entering

Ants deliberately strive to avoid particular scents and chemicals because, like humans, they find them to be exceedingly disgusting. Although ants are known to dislike lemon and cinnamon, these ingredients aren't always successful at keeping ants away. If a colony has already entered your house and is utilizing it as a food source, they will simply discover another entry that gets beyond whatever cinnamon or lemon barriers you may have put in place.

 
10. Ants Prefer Messy Houses

While clearing your home of clutter, leftover food, and other issues will undoubtedly help prevent ants, it is not always effective. Ants are incredibly tenacious scavengers, which makes them exceptionally skilled at finding out food sources even when food is in little supply. So, even if you maintain your home clean, ants could still target it.
 

A SHORT NOTE ON ANTS
 

 
Ten Fascinating Ant Facts

 
1. There Are More Than 12,000 Completely Different Species of Ants Around The Globe
 
Additionally, none of the 12,000 different ant species exhibit the same behaviors! The common carpenter ant, which can be found in North America, bores into the wood to create hollow dwelling rooms. The bullet ant of South America is named for its extremely severe sting, which feels like being fired. The honeypot ants of South India store honey; they consume so much of it that you can see it inside of them.

 
2. Ants Live Incredibly Long Lives (Compared to Other Insects)

Typically, the length of an insect's life is expressed in days or weeks. and for some species of ants—but not all of them—that is approximately right. For instance, queen ants of the Pogonomyrmex Owyhee species can live up to 40 years!
 
 
3. One of The World's Strongest Animals is The Ant (Relative to Their Size)

An ant is capable of carrying something fifty times heavier than itself. To put that into perspective, imagine a 250-pound human lifting an African Bush Elephant that weighs 13,000 pounds all by themselves! Ants can lift considerably more when they cooperate.

 
4. Ants Cannot Hear

Ants lack the auditory canals and ears that mammals do. Instead, they "hear" by sensing ground vibrations. Ants can detect and understand vibrations using specialized sensors on their feet. They can even communicate with one another by creating vibrations that other ants will be able to detect.

 
5. Social Insects Include Ants

A formicary is a name for an ant colony. The cast system used by formicaries is highly specialized, with each class depending on the others. Soldier ants guard the colony against intruders while worker ants construct structures and respond to the queen ant's needs.

 
6. Weaver Ants Build Nests The Size of Soccer Balls

These fascinating nests are constructed by weaver ants who sew leaves together. To pull and bend leaves into the desired places, these ants join their legs together. The silk they will use to "stitch" the leaves together will thereafter be produced by their own larvae.
 
 
7. The Largest Ant Colony Had a Width of More Than 3,500 Miles

Scientists from Switzerland, France, and Denmark first stumbled onto the "supercolony" in 2000. The colony of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) extended from northern Italy through France and all the way to Spain's Atlantic coast! In reality, two separate supercolonies collided and eventually merged to form this colony.

 
8. Ants Are Intelligent

In fact, ants are sometimes cited as the smartest insects in the world. As many as 250,000 brain cells can be found in the small heads of several act species.

 
9. Ants Predate Dinosaurs in Age

Researchers from Harvard and Florida State University discovered that ants had been around for more than 130 million years.

 
10. The Fastest Bite in The Animal Kingdom Belongs to a Species of Ant
 
The aptly named trap-jaw ant has a maximum closing speed of 140 mph. Ouch!
Ants are fascinating creatures, but if they take over your house or place of business, they can become a major pain. 
 

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