I'm fascinated by plants and animals, but ask anyone that knows me and they'll tell you my love for insects. The second you walk in my house you'll find insect boxes next to the couch, insects drying on the tops of cupboards, and in the freezer will be containers of insects in the first phase for before becoming part of my collection (first phase after capture that is) .
With that in mind, i decided it would be fun to give you insight into just how amazing insects can be. In particular i'm going to compare us to ants, and specifically the Leafcutter Ants, Atta cephalotes. I'm going to tell you how life could be like if we lived as the leafcutter ants do, and we had their amazing abilities and systems.
Lets start with family size: to make things fit our human scenario, lets have 1 person represent 100,000 ants. So you'd be living with 30-60 other family members! Lets say this family is 51 people (including the Queen, aka your mother), with 9 more on the way (eggs, aka babies). Your father would have died long before the first of you was even born, in fact your father could be one of several young men that made sweet young love with your very large mother. Your brothers (aka all the boys in the family) would have to move out when they hit puberty, only 5 of the 50 kids are boys. All the boys will grow wings and fly off when they hit the age of about 13. They would never have to work, and do nothing but lie around eating until it's time for them to get a girlfriend, at which point they are forced out of the home or they die and become food. Your mother would live in one of the largest and most hard to reach rooms of the vast underground home.
For simple resons, we'll say the average person is about 150 pounds (just between the average weight for girls, and boys) and are 5'6" tall. All the girls would be leveled off into groups when they are between 10 and 15 years of age. Your 9 biggest sisters would be the bosses, and protect everyone inside the colony. These girls would be weighing about 325 pounds standing 7'6" tall, and made of solid muscle! They spend most of their time in the above apartment complex making sure only family members are getting in, and the boys are leaving at puberty. Whenever there is a cry for help in the fields where you harvest your crops, these sisters come running to the rescue. With 9 massive sisters like this, it makes all those tough teasing sessions as children worth the trouble. Especially when your 6 foot acid spitting neighbors try to steal your food. (aka termites)
The second group in command are the workers. They would be the girls that are older and stronger but not tough enough to be "soldiers", aka the girls in charge. They weigh about 150 pounds but can carry about 3,000 pounds. Their jobs are simple yet require the most energy -- maintenance and cleaning of the home, and bringing the plant crops to the storage rooms that are specially ventilated and kept moist to grow the rich fungus that feeds the colony all year round. They'll take out the garbage to the landfill about half a mile from the apartment, and by the time the family dies off the garbage pile will have been big enough to cover several football fields with over 10 feet high of garbage. Before they are tough enough to go out on the harvest, they work the underground part of the home clearing new rooms all the time. There are 27 of the 45 girls that are "workers". The strongest 20 of these 27 girls will do the manual labor of carrying objects, such as the food, and building materials. They'll sometimes carry upwards of 1,000 pounds of food for 5 miles to the apartment complex. The smaller worker girls clear paths and stay on the look out for danger and alert the colony when anything from nosy neighbors to mountain sized beats get between them and the apartment complex. Sometimes they'll even ride on backs of the larger working girls to get a better view. These girls will also spray paint lines (aka secrete chemicals) on the ground wherever they go so that everyone can find their way back to the colony, and the 9 larger sisters can find their way to them if they need help.
The last 9 girls are like nurses. These girls take care of the injured, the babies, and mix up the ingredients to make the fungi in the growing rooms for the colony. They rarely see the light of day, and are runts compared to their working sisters and soldier sisters.
Now lets talk about the home: Our house would look like a medium sized apartment building from ground level, but once inside you'd find long stairways to a much much larger underground facility. This facility has 8 miles of hallways and staircases that lead to 300+ rooms! In the first mile you'll find good ventilation and simple living accommodations for everyone in the house. The next few miles down you'll find all the bathrooms and kitchens (the fungi rooms). And at the bottom mile you'll find rooms for the very new born babies (aka the eggs), and the mother (the large room with the queen) that never leaves unless all her daughters move her to a new site, if threatened by things such as flood.
Quite the family if you ask me. So you see, even the smallest of insects can be very impressive when put into perspective.
With that in mind, i decided it would be fun to give you insight into just how amazing insects can be. In particular i'm going to compare us to ants, and specifically the Leafcutter Ants, Atta cephalotes. I'm going to tell you how life could be like if we lived as the leafcutter ants do, and we had their amazing abilities and systems.
Lets start with family size: to make things fit our human scenario, lets have 1 person represent 100,000 ants. So you'd be living with 30-60 other family members! Lets say this family is 51 people (including the Queen, aka your mother), with 9 more on the way (eggs, aka babies). Your father would have died long before the first of you was even born, in fact your father could be one of several young men that made sweet young love with your very large mother. Your brothers (aka all the boys in the family) would have to move out when they hit puberty, only 5 of the 50 kids are boys. All the boys will grow wings and fly off when they hit the age of about 13. They would never have to work, and do nothing but lie around eating until it's time for them to get a girlfriend, at which point they are forced out of the home or they die and become food. Your mother would live in one of the largest and most hard to reach rooms of the vast underground home.
For simple resons, we'll say the average person is about 150 pounds (just between the average weight for girls, and boys) and are 5'6" tall. All the girls would be leveled off into groups when they are between 10 and 15 years of age. Your 9 biggest sisters would be the bosses, and protect everyone inside the colony. These girls would be weighing about 325 pounds standing 7'6" tall, and made of solid muscle! They spend most of their time in the above apartment complex making sure only family members are getting in, and the boys are leaving at puberty. Whenever there is a cry for help in the fields where you harvest your crops, these sisters come running to the rescue. With 9 massive sisters like this, it makes all those tough teasing sessions as children worth the trouble. Especially when your 6 foot acid spitting neighbors try to steal your food. (aka termites)
The second group in command are the workers. They would be the girls that are older and stronger but not tough enough to be "soldiers", aka the girls in charge. They weigh about 150 pounds but can carry about 3,000 pounds. Their jobs are simple yet require the most energy -- maintenance and cleaning of the home, and bringing the plant crops to the storage rooms that are specially ventilated and kept moist to grow the rich fungus that feeds the colony all year round. They'll take out the garbage to the landfill about half a mile from the apartment, and by the time the family dies off the garbage pile will have been big enough to cover several football fields with over 10 feet high of garbage. Before they are tough enough to go out on the harvest, they work the underground part of the home clearing new rooms all the time. There are 27 of the 45 girls that are "workers". The strongest 20 of these 27 girls will do the manual labor of carrying objects, such as the food, and building materials. They'll sometimes carry upwards of 1,000 pounds of food for 5 miles to the apartment complex. The smaller worker girls clear paths and stay on the look out for danger and alert the colony when anything from nosy neighbors to mountain sized beats get between them and the apartment complex. Sometimes they'll even ride on backs of the larger working girls to get a better view. These girls will also spray paint lines (aka secrete chemicals) on the ground wherever they go so that everyone can find their way back to the colony, and the 9 larger sisters can find their way to them if they need help.
The last 9 girls are like nurses. These girls take care of the injured, the babies, and mix up the ingredients to make the fungi in the growing rooms for the colony. They rarely see the light of day, and are runts compared to their working sisters and soldier sisters.
Now lets talk about the home: Our house would look like a medium sized apartment building from ground level, but once inside you'd find long stairways to a much much larger underground facility. This facility has 8 miles of hallways and staircases that lead to 300+ rooms! In the first mile you'll find good ventilation and simple living accommodations for everyone in the house. The next few miles down you'll find all the bathrooms and kitchens (the fungi rooms). And at the bottom mile you'll find rooms for the very new born babies (aka the eggs), and the mother (the large room with the queen) that never leaves unless all her daughters move her to a new site, if threatened by things such as flood.
Quite the family if you ask me. So you see, even the smallest of insects can be very impressive when put into perspective.
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