• They live in massive colony complexes with as many as hundreds of thousands of members (I’m an urbanite to the core and I want to live in an arcology)
  • All their food goes into a communal store that any ant can take from when they’re hungry (based)
  • They collectively work to maintain the colony. There is no “those people” or “that neighborhood” (based)
  • Children raised collectively - no nepo babies, no orphans (based)
  • Most of them are unconcerned with having children - the colony itself is their legacy (extremely relatable)
  • Some species readily integrate “orphan ants” (those who have lost their queen); within days, they’re family (contrast this to how our own media talks about stateless people and refugees)
  • When one of them is attacked, a whole swarm jumps into the fray to protect each other, compensating for individual weakness with unity of purpose and sheer numbers (we call that solidarity)

Ants are fucking awesome. I want to be more like them bug-facts

  • Dort_Owl [they/them, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    You have activated my bug obsession, sorry:

    Ant’s and bees rule. You might think “But wait they have a Queen so they’d be shitty” but that’s all just human projection, the queen isn’t any kind of ruler and is completely beholden to the workers.

    The interesting thing about social Hymenoptera species is that the jobs they do are completely based on age. The youngest ones clean things and keep warm, then after a couple of days the job changes to feeding larvae, then after that they build things, then after that they do guard duty, and then the oldest go out of the hive and collect food (because it’s the most dangerous job so the oldest do it).

    That’s the complete opposite to what we have been doing where the youngest get the most dangerous work.