How Do Ants Reproduce?
Today’s topic will be covering the process of ant lovemaking, better yet known as the reproduction cycle. This topic is very interesting because ants have their own system. Only the queen ants can get pregnant. If you’re working a 9-5 in the ant society then you’re not allowed to get pregnant. That has to sting bad, especially if your dream is to make babies. What happens if you’re born into a class of working ants & never get the chance to become a queen?
What will happen to the worker ant if she makes herself a queen? Will the ant patrol come & arrest her? After doing some serious digging I found out that most ant males die after mating.
That has to sting really bad. Could you imagine your only mission on earth is to make a baby & once you’re done with this process, you die? That sucks, most of the ants grow up without fathers, we all know that a child needs their father!
This ant world is super intriguing, there are 3 basic ways that ants can reproduce. If my first two facts kept you interested, listen to this! The first one is Swarming, this is mainly for fire ants & other species causing the winged males & queen females to leave the colony.
Once the queen gets pregnant she has to start a new colony. In perspective the queen is creating a tribe far from home, creating that beautiful legacy for the next generation. The second process is asexual reproduction, causing the offspring of queen ants to produce only women in the further generation.
How does a society thrive on having few mates & continually grow larger day by day? Finally, we’re learning about budding, this is when the queen walks with wingless working ants helping her start the new colony with an army.
From my perspective the swarming process it’s mainly for ants that are born in royalty or are the 10/10 babes in the ant world. Think about it, how does the Swarming queen ant get to fly in the sky with winged males. While the budding queen ant has to walk & with the wingless ants. Well, I may be wrong but antland is far more interesting than human land.
All three processes have a lot in common! They’re forced to relocate & build a colony. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact of the asexual reproduction process, the offspring are only women. How can a woman reproduce with another woman in ant land?
This makes me think there’s some type of adoption or fertilization agency down there. It has to be some type of system in place of ants. Do you think the ants have their own language speaking amongst each other? After the queen finishes mating she sheds her wings. The queen ants never have power over the colony. I’m glad they’re not running a dictatorship underground. The queen does have a cool superpower, she’s allowed to hold her eggs & fertilize them for months & years until she’s ready to have babies. After gathering this information I learned that ant land is very cool!
