Keeping ants
It’s that time of year again where we no longer have to sit inside in the cold . Summertime is a wonderful time for life including, unsurprisingly, ants. Those of you familiar with YouTube channels such as AntsCanada probably know that people do keep ants as pets. Those of you that are not aware of…
Species Profile: Lasius niger
Common Name: Black Garden Ant Scientific Name: Lasius niger Family: Formicidae Subfamily: Formicinae General Information Native Range: Europe, parts of Asia, and introduced to North America Habitat: Urban areas, grasslands, forests, gardens Colony Size: Large (100,000+ workers) Colony Type: Monogynous (single queen) Physical Description Worker Size: 3-5 mm Queen Size: 6-9 mm Coloration: Dark brown…
Hell ants
Yes you read the title right today we are getting straight into it and talking about hell ants. They are some of the coolest ants to have lived and I want to share their coolness with you. Hell ants are the species found in the Subfamily Haidomyrmecinae. They are Unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re an…
All of you part 2
Hi Everyone! I hope the new year is treating you all well. A couple of years ago I made a small post about…well…all of you. Just a few quick stats on who views this site. I think it is a nice excuse to say thank you to every one of you! As of the 20th…
Poster Update
Happy New Year everyone! We have started the year by updating our poster design! Available here! Both designs are still available if you prefer the old design. A small look below! Enjoy! Thanks, Alex. If you have enjoyed this site and its content please consider becoming a Patron so I can add more content in…
Weird and Wonderful adaptations part 3: Winter ants
For those of us in the northern hemisphere the days are shorter and colder. That can only mean 1 thing: Winter. Countless animal species will begin hibernating if they haven’t already. Ants are no exception, with countless colonies and species hunkering down for the winter. As you can probably guess from the title and the…
Flying ant day is almost here!
Recently on my lunch break at work I did what I usually spend my time doing, flipping logs and seeing what is living under them. What I found are the telling signs that flying ant day is on its way. Below I will show you the signs. If you want to know what flying ant…
Weird and Wonderful adaptations part 2: Honeypot ants
Today I will be taking a look at one of my favourite ants: honeypot ants in the genera Myrmecocystus. I think you’ll agree that they earn the titles weird and wonderful. Honey pots ants of this genus are native to North and central America. They live in very harsh environments such as Deserts where water and…
Poster Now on Sale!
All over the world, ants are getting ready to come out of hibernation! Want to identify which ants are around you? You’ll need my Poster!!! My Ant Subfamily Identification poster is now on sale as a digital download! You can keep it on your devices to help you out or you can print it and…
Conservation, Climate , Ants and other Invertebrates- Part 2
This is the second part of this mini series of articles. Please read Part 1 to make sure you have all the context necessary. This is quite a long one but please read it and share it as much as possible. Consider it an instruction manual on how to save the world. In this article,…
All of you
So I am a sucker for data, data visualisation and geography. Seeing as the new year is upon us, I decided to Make a pair of charts and tables just so I could visualise where you are all from! I thought some people might be interested so here you are All of this information is…
Conservation, Climate , Ants and other Invertebrates- Part 1
Small preface time: This article is the first of a series I am releasing and has a lot of overlap with my master’s thesis. If the wording seems a bit odd, that’s because it is. Without going into too much detail, self-plagiarism is a thing, and I would rather not have to deal with that.…
Why Taxonomy Sucks
I am writing a small and interesting article and it ended up going on a massive tangent about why taxonomy is so bloated and such a pain. The article really lost its way but it needs the context of taxonomy to make any sense so this post will basically be a brief overview of how…
Red ants and Blue Butterflies
Two colourful species come together but do not form purple unfortunately. These two animals are equally beautiful but butterflies are often more appreciated. When I say that butterflies and ants have interactions you may think it’s a pretty open and shut case. You may be thinking that if the butterflies are unfortunate enough to get…
A small preview
Did you know Panda reserves alone cost $6.9 billion per year while the entire European Union has set aside $54 million for invertebrate conservation. Throughout Europe 400 of the over 100,000 species of known invertebrates are listed as protected, or priority species and receive only 0.7% of the funding aimed at pandas alone; this does…
E.O Wilson
Today E.O Wilson, the man who literally co-wrote the book on ants, has died aged 92.
Happy December!
Please share these sites and let me know what you think! Thanks, Alex If you have enjoyed this site and its content please consider becoming a Patron so I can add more content in the future. And check out what I do and where to find me here: https://allmylinks.com/alexants
New sites!
The results from my recent poll showed that you wanted a site about non-ant things as well as this site. So I made 2 new sites! Yeah ok I got a bit carried away. The first new site is called Everything Else and is about… everything else that isn’t ants. There are already a few…
What do you think?
I love ants. This should not be a surprise to you. But I am amazed and fascinated by so many other things. I love history, film, physics, all zoology, space and so many other things. I want to start writing about these things. These posts could be a simple diagram or a deep dive or…
Dracula ants
On this, the spookiest of days, it is always comforting to know that the ghouls, goblins and all the bumps in the night are not real. If only that were true. Vlad the Impaler (The real Count Dracula) and all those sparkly losers in those fictional works. Thankfully these vampires aren’t real. Seriously, thank God…
Team Seas
A wildly different post today! In 2019 YouTube creators and members of the community started raising money to plant 20,000,000 trees by 2020: TeamTrees. They partnered with amazing charities that meant $1 raised meant 1 tree planted. We reached 20,000,000 trees well before 2020! The number is increasing every day and currently sits at $23,341,710…
Invasive Species
Before I begin this article I want to say this: Now, back to your regularly (Not very regularly) scheduled article. Through countless means, many human in nature, species spread throughout the world. This. Is. Bad. For the most part. An invasive species is any organism that has spread beyond its natural range and is causing…
Ant Anatomy
Anatomy is extremely important when identifying species. Anatomy also uses a bunch of complicated words to make it as hard to understand as possible. Not really but it can seem like that when you are first getting into it. This is a part of my process of teaching myself how to identify ant species using…
Ant Identification guide announcement!
Whether you are studying ants, have found an ant in your kitchen or are just curious about ants it often helps to know what ant you are looking at. With Thousands of ant species around the world it is hard to figure out which one is which. This is especially true with fossils and even…
Exciting updates!
Hello everybody! I have been working really hard to get my current project for the site finished and presentable. I don’t think it will be long before I add it to the site. There will be an accompanying post when it is released but I am too excited to not tease you all! Hopefully you…
Army ants
Army ants are just as intense as they sound. They are the Mongol hordes of the ant world. They are relentless, brutal and I love them. They can hunt all the insects in a particular area of rain forest that they need to move to new areas. They build living bridges, homes out of their…
Oecophylla: weaver ants
So the vote from a recent post ended in a tie which really did not help me make the decision on which ants to write about. Someone commented saying they liked weaver ants so here they are. Your comments always influence the content on this site. Weaver ants of the Genus Oecophylla are some of…
An update and a vote!
Hello everybody I hope you are all well. The mega-project I am currently working on is really mega so it will be quite some time before it is released. I don’t want to leave you without any new content for that long and, quite frankly, I need something else to do for a few days.…
Ants and the tree of life visualized
Today I am going to show you how huge and messy the tree of life really is. This is purely here because it is cool and it can help to put things into perspective. Enjoy. If you learned about taxonomy in school you were probably shown something like this: Looks simple right? That’s because it…
Bullet ants and pain
If you have heard of ants then I am pretty sure you have heard of bullet ants. If not then oh boy you are in for a treat. So sit back, relax and get ready for my first post of 2021! Bullet ants, Paraponera clavata, are a large species of ant found throughout Central and…
I am back
Hello everybody! I am now slowly getting back into writing these blog posts now that my master’s in complete. I am currently writing a new post for the new year and if you want to see me cover any topics or answer any questions please let me know in the comments on this page or…
December Giving
Hey everybody! Now I know I have a small audience but I really want to try to do some good to help make 2020 a bit better because, lets face it, 2020 has been absolute pants. Which is why and and all money I make on Patreon in the month of December will be donated…
I am still here
Hello everybody, it has been a while. I am sorry for the lack of content recently, my masters project has been eating me alive. I do have some good news and some bad news. The good news is my project is almost finished so I will be getting back into posting more regularly. The bad…
My Uganda trip part 3
This is part 3 of my “I am very sorry but my masters project is killing me please have some pictures of ants” series today. For part 1 and an explanation of what is going on please read this post. For the last instalment please read this one. Here we go. To start today we…
My Uganda trip part 2
I know this post is a bit bare bones. Currently working on my masters thesis. Stress. Oh the stress so please bare with me. It seems you enjoyed the last post so here is more of that! I suggest you read that one to figure out whats going on! Here we go. We start with…
My Uganda trip
Today’s post is going to be very different and, hopefully, enjoyable or at least interesting. I am going to share most of my ant pictures I took on my 2018 trip to Uganda I went on with my University. Instead of just showing you, I thought you might enjoy helping me Identify the species! My…
Leafcutter ants- Air conditioned farmers
Leaf cutter ants are among the most recognisable and famous groups of ants. Countless people have seen these species in zoos and in documentaries. This post will focus on Atta and Acromyrmex for the sake of simplicity and sanity. There are 46 other ant genera that grow fungus for food so I can’t cover them…
Ants that don’t walk
A while ago I hinted at an ant that doesn’t walk in a poor attempt at humour. Now I will explain and I promise you, the payoff probably isn’t worth it. When we think of ants we think of huge colonies of ants running about, doing their thing. Not all ants do this. You see,…
Ant colony founding: Part 2
As the title suggests, this post is a direct continuation from Ant colony founding. I strongly recommend reading that post before this one as I will be using terms and phrases explained in that post. It’s also a good read and seeing my view counter tick up makes me happy so please have a read…
Your Questions and My Answers
Jonas asked “If every ant was human-sized and you put them all together in space, would they generate enough gravity to become their own planet?” I have absolutely no idea. Let’s find out. E.O Wilson once wrote that the biomass of all ants was equal to that of all humans. This makes our job a…
Your ants
Hey everybody, I hope you’re all doing well. In the near future I will be covering ant keeping. I will start with the hows and whys and then go from there. If anyone knows why to keep ants it is the ant keeping community. So I would love to see your formicaria and setups. If…
Ant colony founding
Ant colonies. They all start somewhere. With the thousands upon thousands of species there are so many different ways that these colonies start off. I will be upfront, this will probably have a second part. I will probably get carried away and make a post several thousand words long. And nobody wants that. So let…
Castes
Within a colony, there is a lot of work to be done. So many different tasks need completing. From foraging to feeding, from defence to digging, all of these roles require different actions and abilities. An average ant could probably complete these tasks, although not very well. Some tasks they couldn’t complete at all such…
Just a very quick post to announce we now have an Instagram page! Follow for updates and featured questions and pictures from the community! Follow and enjoy! Thanks, Alex. If you have enjoyed this site and its content please consider donating so I can add more content in the future.
Weird and Wonderful adaptations part 1: Silver ants.
This is the first of a series of posts about specific species or genera and the extraordinary adaptation they have. This could be a behavioural or physical adaptation. If this is a series you would be interested in please let me know by liking the post, commenting or adding yourself to the mailing list found…
Patreon
Hey everybody, Alex here. Today’s post is very different from usual but it is just to officially announce I have a Patreon page. I have linked it in all my posts but haven’t advertised it yet. I love writing these posts and reading up on ant facts but it takes a while. Writing it takes…
If ants were human sized
Imagine an ant the size of a person. Ignoring the mass hysteria and the fact that this is impossible, what could an ant do? Just a single ant. Not a colony. Just one. Well a Saharan silver ant, Cataglyphis bombycina, can run 100 times its body length in a second. So if an ant of…
Become scientists!
I recently heard about an app in development and I reached out to the creators to ask if I could write about it. I genuinely love this app idea and am writing this out of my own volition. I contacted them with some questions and I used this information to write this post. Enjoy! So…
Ant or Termite?
So, termites are fascinating animals and deserve to be respected in their own right instead of just being a comparison to ants. Let me know in the comments at the bottom of the page if you would be interested in some termite content. I am more of an ant person but would be willing to…
Alex Ants Facebook group
Hey everyone, just a short post today to announce we now have a Facebook group! This group will keep you up to date with my blog, let you have friendly ant discussions and even participate to the blog! Join the group to ask questions, get updates and your voice may even be heard in the…
Colony life cycle Part 1: The basics
Before we start, I am just going to say that this will cover the general lifecycle of an ant colony. There are so many different colony cycles that I cannot cover them all in 1 post. So, stay tuned for some more posts about more unusual species. But for now, enjoy. In a hole in…
Ant Life cycle
OK so today we’re going to cover the life cycle of an Ant. Where insects such as butterflies have a simple circular life cycle, ants do have a circle but it’s got bits coming off of it. Small like a life sun If anything. Anyway, I will try my best to explain it and as…
Ants and their size Part 1- The big ones
Over the last few posts, we have been covering some heavy science. Well done for making it through but I feel like we need a break. To be honest, I need a break from all that science. There are only so many times you can write a big word in a row before it breaks…
Ant Evolution
In this post will be covering how, when, why and who ants evolved. This is an exceptionally long story. The Lord of the rings is a film series that’s nine hours long. That is pretty long. How I Met your mother was nine seasons and that was just about how he met a woman. So…
Why do ants live in colonies? Part 1: Genetics
When Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace first wrote about evolution, ants confused them. A lot! The whole point of evolution is to get better at spreading your genes and having as many of your genes in the next generation. So, animals evolve and adapt to become better at having children and having their children…
What is an ant?
This seems like a very easy question to answer: Ants are small things that ruin picnics. While this is technically true, I promise you that the full answer is much more interesting than that. It is much more complicated too but all interesting things are! Ok so ants are animals that live in colonies that…
What is this site all about?
Ants are amazing animals and not enough people agree with that. To fully appreciate these bizarre and alien animals, you need to understand them and look a little closer. I will try to get you to appreciate them as much as I do. Hopefully, you will see they can be beautiful, ‘intelligent’, strong, and just…
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