Ant
A worker five millimetres long can lift many times its own weight and belongs to a colony that runs without a leader.
Ants range from under a millimetre to more than three centimetres long, but a typical garden ant worker, such as the black garden ant Lasius niger, is about 3 to 5 millimetres. That is five sand grains end to end, or about seventy human hairs side by side.
Small size makes some feats easy. Muscle strength depends on cross-sectional area while weight depends on volume, so the smaller an animal is, the stronger it is for its weight. Many ants can lift 10 to 50 times their own mass. Falls hold no danger either: an ant's terminal velocity is so low that it can drop from any height and walk away.
Around 14,000 ant species have been described. A study published in 2022 estimated that some 20 quadrillion ants (2 × 10¹⁶) are alive at any moment, with a combined carbon mass greater than that of all wild birds and mammals put together.
A colony works without central command. The queen lays eggs; she does not give orders. Workers follow simple rules and chemical trails, and from millions of small local decisions come efficient foraging routes, climate-controlled nests and, in some species, fungus farms and herds of aphids kept for their sugary honeydew.
- Size
- 5 × 10⁻³ m
- Described species
- about 14,000
- Estimated population
- about 2 × 10¹⁶
- Typical worker mass
- about 1–5 mg