All About Ants (almost)
Among the many hundreds of thousands of astonishing organisms with which we must
share this earth, there is one seemingly ordinary group of specimens which
fascinates many people beyond all others. There is nothing too extraordinary in
the proportions or appearance of ants, but it is their history and culture that
induces a second look. These insects are about as different from us mammals as
two organisms can be, yet it appears that of all the known animals their way of
life appears closest to our human way of life. The similarities in the ways in
which we organize our lives are astounding. Ants are doubtlessly the most
successful of all the social insects of the Hymenoptera, an order also including
wasps and bees.
The earliest known specimens are found entombed in the Scandinavian Baltic Amber
samples which scientists date in upwards of 100 million years old (The Ant
Colony 89). These primitive samples have evolved into the 5000 to 10000
species......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 2836
Approximate Pages: 11 (260 words per double-spaced page) |