Why do red ants bite while black ones don't?
When I was a kid (hence fifteen years in the title), the prevalent theory was that because black ones were from god and red ones from devil, and hence it was ok to kill red ants. And as far as I remember, I did buy it. Now today, and it's a little hard to explain why, the question popped back in my mind while having lunch. And having the great power of the internetz at my fingertips (which my ten-year-old-library-scavenging self would have been totally awed at), I decided to put it to good use. And the short answer is, not sure. Stinging is the dominant defense mechanism in the ant family tree, but recently evolved subspecies lack it. Which means the black ant I met as a kid (most likely some relative of black carpenter ant) is younger than the red ant (most likely some relative of fire ant) in evolutionary terms (again my ten-year-old-self would have been totally awed by this, having no concept of evolution). In the process I learned a bit about different defense meachanisms employed by ants, bite-and-spray-acid vs sting-and-insert-alakoloid etc (red ants do not actually bite, they sting. Some workers from black ant family do bite) and discovered this interesting blog (in fact, many of the facts in this post come from this post). Take a look, gooood stuff!! To top it all, there is even a sting index (so sting like a bee is 2.x if you are a honey bee). Fundoo!! As for me, I am just glad, you know that pure gladness which we all knew as kids (which now seems to have deserted for the most part), that kind of glad to have made a little more progress :).
Enjoy!!
P.S. I realize there must be more to this than my few minutes worth of googling revealed. If you do come across further info, please let me know. Thanks in advance.
When I was a kid (hence fifteen years in the title), the prevalent theory was that because black ones were from god and red ones from devil, and hence it was ok to kill red ants. And as far as I remember, I did buy it. Now today, and it's a little hard to explain why, the question popped back in my mind while having lunch. And having the great power of the internetz at my fingertips (which my ten-year-old-library-scavenging self would have been totally awed at), I decided to put it to good use. And the short answer is, not sure. Stinging is the dominant defense mechanism in the ant family tree, but recently evolved subspecies lack it. Which means the black ant I met as a kid (most likely some relative of black carpenter ant) is younger than the red ant (most likely some relative of fire ant) in evolutionary terms (again my ten-year-old-self would have been totally awed by this, having no concept of evolution). In the process I learned a bit about different defense meachanisms employed by ants, bite-and-spray-acid vs sting-and-insert-alakoloid etc (red ants do not actually bite, they sting. Some workers from black ant family do bite) and discovered this interesting blog (in fact, many of the facts in this post come from this post). Take a look, gooood stuff!! To top it all, there is even a sting index (so sting like a bee is 2.x if you are a honey bee). Fundoo!! As for me, I am just glad, you know that pure gladness which we all knew as kids (which now seems to have deserted for the most part), that kind of glad to have made a little more progress :).
Enjoy!!
P.S. I realize there must be more to this than my few minutes worth of googling revealed. If you do come across further info, please let me know. Thanks in advance.
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