Top 10 Awesome Things You Didn’t Know About Ants
Top 10 Awesome Things You Didn't Know About Ants
10. They Can Stitch Up Wounds
Minor wounds are considered just an annoyance, with advanced medicine just a call away. However, if we are in the middle of the African Savannah, with no first aid kit, and the nearest help we can get is still days away, fixing that little wound can mean life or death. Apparently, some tribes, like the Masai Tribe in East Africa, faced the same problem and found an easy first aid trick on the go – the army ant’s strong pincers.
If a Masai warrior is out in the African bush and suffers a wound that needs stitching, all he needs to do is look for an Army Ant’s nest and pick a few of the biggest ants he could find and have them bite both sides of the wound then break off the body, leaving just the head. The seal created by the makeshift surgical staples can last for days, and can be easily replaced if needed.
9. Before God Created Man, He Created Ants First
We all know that we, as a species, are relative newbies in the whole of creation, evolving a mere five million years ago. Now, compare that to a living fossil like the ant, who has been around since the Cretaceous Period, about 110 – 130 million years ago. The age gap, and the relative high social evolution of the ants, may mean that only a fluke roll of the celestial dice made the difference in regards to which species came first.
8. They Dispose Of Their Dead
Only a few creatures on Earth treat their dead with some relative deference: humans, elephants, and shockingly, ants. They even have undertakers to do it. When an ant dies inside the nest, they will carry the dead body outside for sanitation’s sake, so that infection or disease cannot spread to the entire colony. Though any worker ant may carry the body outside, it seems that there is a special ant undertaker that will usually do the cleaning up.
