How much does an ant weigh and how much weight can it lift

Almost every person has ants associated with hard work, self-sacrifice and the ability to work day and night for the good of the colony. There is even a saying: “Work like a hundred ants.” In addition, scientists have found that ants can boast not only enviable "workaholism", but also amazing physical abilities. And knowing how much an ant weighs, one can only wonder how they do it.

Even in schools, students are told that ants can lift a load more than their own weight, 10 times more than their own weight. But as it turned out, this is not the limit - as the ants study, more and more impressive facts about their abilities come to light ...

 

How much does an ant weigh and all ants in general?

The average weight of an ant varies depending on the species from 1 to 150 milligrams. Our usual black and red forest ants weigh about 5-7 milligrams.

The lightest ants are Pharaoh’s, well-known household pests, and some species of tropical ants, such as small ones. The ant mass from the workers' caste of these species is 1-2 milligrams.

And one of the largest species of ants is the South American ant-bullet and African stray ants. In the former, a working ant weighs up to 90 milligrams, and in the latter, the uterus, during the period of settled life, is stoutly full and can weigh up to 10 grams!

At this time, such a uterus can lay up to 120 thousand eggs every day, which is also one of the records not only among insects, but also among other animals in general. In addition, both ant-bullet and stray ants (siafu) are among the most dangerous in the world.

It turns out that one uterus A stray ant weighs as much as 200-700 workers. Although there are species - for example, jumping ants - in which the uterus from the working ants practically do not differ either in size or in mass. But these ants have many other distinctive features. For example, they may even reproduce simple working ants.

It is interesting

The largest ants that lived on Earth had a body length of up to 7 cm in queens. If you extrapolate their mass, it turns out that such monsters weighed about 20 grams.

In general, ants are so widespread and so numerous that their total weight on the planet is greater than that of any other group of insects. According to scientists, all ants on Earth weigh about the same as all people weigh - about one billion tons. At the same time, about 10 million ants per person.

But in ants, it’s interesting not even how much they weigh, but their ability to lift objects is very heavy compared to their body weight.

 

What weight does an ant lift?

Today it is verified that, on average, an ant lifts a weight 50 times its own - for example, up to 100 mg tolerates each worker ant leaf cutter. Knowing how much an ant weighs, you can calculate what it is capable of, like a weightlifter.

Interestingly, in the leaf cutter ants, soldiers weigh several dozen times more than ordinary workers, and the queen is 700 times larger! Naturally, this type of soldier appears only in those anthills, the number of which exceeds 100 thousand individuals - it is difficult for a smaller number of workers to feed such an army.

In principle, a soldier of this type can set a more outstanding record, but he never does that: his task is not to carry loads, but to protect the “movers”.

On a note

If a person could lift weight in the same proportions as ants do, then he would easily squeeze a barbell up to 5 tons over his head. That is, the power of the ant exceeds that of a person about 25 times. As the mathematicians have ingeniously calculated, about a million ants will be needed to carry an adult, and about 10,000 to transfer a beer. Of course, the results of such measurements depend on the type of ant and how much each of them weighs.

Of course, the smaller the ant, the less weight it raises. However, the ratio of the lifted weight to the mass of the ant itself grows as the size of the insect decreases.

It is interesting

With a joint transfer of weight, the ability of ants increases even more. During laboratory experiments, the ant alone developed a power of 24.2 erg / s, and two ants together developed a power of 63.2 erg / s. That is, an ant can raise in cooperation with a friend as much as they both do not raise together.

Why are ants so strong?

It must be said that not only ants are so strong: in general, all insects can develop very high power.The same fleas very quickly push their body a distance of 150 times the length of their body. And scarab beetles can lift a weight that is 850 times as much as their body weight. In front of such abilities, even the power of an ant seems not so great.

The reason for such phenomenal abilities of ants and insects in general has long been explained by scientists. In the animal world, there is a law according to which, with a decrease in the geometric dimensions of the body of a living being, its mass decreases in proportion to the length of the body in the third degree, and the cross-sectional area of ​​the muscles is proportional to the square of the body length.

It is a little difficult, but it means that ants per unit mass of a muscle are 100 times stronger than a person. And this proportion is observed for other living creatures - crustaceans, fish, mammals. In addition, the external skeleton and a slightly different structure of the muscles make their allowances to these calculations.

In general, this does not mean that the little ant - strongest. Really tiny pharaoh ant raises a weight, more times the weight that a giant stray ant raises. But the absolute mass of the load in the case of a domestic pest is less.Therefore, the strongest ant - just the largest.

 

Ant abilities

However, the power of ants is determined not only by the weight that they can lift. Ants use their physical abilities in other ways.

For example, ant bridges are very well known, which are organized by working individuals of African nomadic ants to transport larvae and uterus through water barriers. Several hundred ants capture each other's bodies so firmly that a mammal the size of a cat can run across the bridge to the other side of the stream. True, no animal tries to do this - these ants are extremely dangerous because of their painful bites.

And the same leaf cutter ants can drag a weight of 30 times the weight of their body along the ground. The need for this may occur when an insect cannot lift it above its head due to the non-standard size of the object.

Interestingly, many similar abilities of ants, especially the inventive representatives of Homo Sapiens, have learned to use for their own purposes.

 

Ants build a bridge (video)

 

Is it possible to use "ant power"?

In Central Africa, the powerful jaws of ants are used to sew open wounds on the body: the two edges of the wound are pressed against each other and like a stapler attached to them by an angry ant head. The insect immediately compresses the jaws and squeezes both edges of the skin tightly. Several such ants - and the seam is ready. It is only important to cut off the ant head as soon as possible with scissors: after that, the jaws will not open again.

Sometimes in the same Africa, the natives obtain tasty seeds and small nuts from anthills, using ants as collectors. However, the natives in this regard are incredibly ethical - instead of the reserves taken from the anthill, they leave insects with pieces of dried meat or fruit. They know that if nature is not robbed, but equally shared with her, she will thank many times.

 

Interesting video: an example of a huge ant