An Insect Like Myself

This one might be a tough question: What would I do if I were an insect? I imagine a lot of people haven’t even thought about it, and neither had I. It took a bit of time to come up with an insect like myself. How does someone liken themselves to an insect in the first place? After thinking about it, I decided I would probably be an ant. I know this sounds a little weird, but in an odd way, I have a lot in common with an ant… all of which I will cover in the paragraphs to come.

First of all, ants are just kinda cool. They have big, vicious, mandibles which sometimes contain certain chemicals that irritates our skin and body. Okay, maybe that part isn’t like me… But this part is… They build highly intricate colonies commonly known as “ant hills”, and I myself love to build stuff as well. I’m not claustrophobic, and actually like small, dim places. This pretty much sums up an ant hill, and I don’t think i would mind living in one much.

A fun fact that I found intriguing about ants is they learn differently from other insects. Most insects learn via imitation, but ants actually possess the ability to “Tutor” younger and less experienced ants, similar to how I tutor my brothers in our American History course, Paths of Exploration. They can also sense when the student ant needs a break, and slows down to let them catch up. On the other hand, when an ant is speeding up behind the tutor ant, they speeds up as well. They also possess the ability to choose what job they do in the colony, so long as it’s the one they’re best at. If a large group of ants are cut off from a food supply for some amount of time, they will actually stop searching and strictly guard and tend the nest.

Here’s another quick and fun fact.  One ant, known as the Pharaoh Ant, actually makes it’s nest inside of a sheet of paper. Believe it or not, It’s about the size of the head of a pen!

On the scientific side, my taxonomy would be completely different from that of a human. My new taxonomy would be as follows: Kingdom Animalia, Phylum Arthropoda, Class Insecta, Order Hymenoptera, and Family Formicidae. All organisms within this taxonomy are classified as ants. This is very different from that of a normal human, which ends up in Family Hominidae.  

Although ants can be very interesting, they’re more often than not, considered pests. This is mostly because of their painful sting, but there are other things about them that are undesirable. Something I suspect almost everyone knows about is that ants are attracted to food. If you have a lot of ants in your area then you’re very familiar with this.  To prevent ants from getting your food, simply put it in a plastic bag when your done with it.

I hope you enjoyed reading this somewhat odd post, and in the process learned a little bit more about ants, how they think, and that in general they’re worth the trouble they sometimes cause.

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