When The Ants Went Marching In.....The Ants' Legs.

the boring scientific,factual and technical ....all demands that i MUST elucidate a little... for the benefit of the ignoramus and the plebian...Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related families of wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. They are a diverse group of more than 12,000 species, with a higher diversity in the tropics. They are known for their highly organized colonies and nests, which sometimes consist of millions of individuals. Individuals are divided into sub-fertile, and more commonly sterile, females ("workers"), fertile males ("drones"), and fertile females ("queens"). Colonies can occupy and use a wide area of land to support them. Ant colonies are sometimes described as superorganisms because the colony appears to operate as a single entity.

the morphological divisions of the ant body is divided into the head,the thorax and the abdomen.the legs are six in number.... or as the esteemed entomolgists would jargon it..... 3 pairs of jointed legs...all of which arise from the thorax. each of the legs have 6 segments.... where the tibial spur is the vital segment which aids in motility,speed,defence and the other wondorus aspects of this little natural wonder.

the most fascinating ( only a 6 year old or a nature freak or a entomologist would find this fascinating....however... since im catering to a broad spectrum range)....is thatSome ants have a stinger and some can even inject poisonous acid from the stinger (the stinger is at the tip of the abdomen, the rear body segment).
i apologize( even though i am not responsible for designing or engineering the ant and its mechanisms).. that the sting is not a part of the leg.
partly because there is not much more to elaborate on the physiological or anatomical details of an ant leg....
and partly for the more flighty,err sorry.... LIVELY subjects......

heres the funny thing about the things that dont matter.......unless they are all over your bed while lie sleeping.....

they have been subjected to the mental vagrancies of peculiar scientific directions..... the long and short of it...... a certain Professor Harald Wolf of the University of Ulm, ( no i am not fabricating)....actually postulated that the ants have an in built pedometer....( that is an instrument which is used to measure distances travelled but counting the no. of strides on takes.)
the mathematics.... or simply the calculative results reveal... as per his research....it takes them a thousand strides from the nest to the feeder, they would of course assume that they needed to take another 1,000 strides to return to the nest.

"And if they take the 1,000 strides with shorter legs, this will take them over a shorter distance, and if the legs are extended it takes them over a longer distance"
here on.... the built in pedometer can be modified into a .... voila! ....odometer.!!!!(go look up the dictionary you nitwit)

and thus the attempt....prestigious study and scintific research which was of national importance revealed that ants could measure the distnaces that they walked etc.....and the final result of this swiss and german government funded study was published in the english journal called "LiveScience".
heres an extract from it.....

The ant "pedometer" technique was first proposed in 1904, but it remained untested until now.
Scientists trained desert ants, Cataglyphis fortis, to walk along a straight path from their nest entrance to a feeder 30 feet away. If the nest or feeder was moved, the ants would break from their straight path after reaching the anticipated spot and search for their goal....
'Next, the researchers performed a little cosmetic surgery.
They glued stilt-like extensions to the legs of some ants to lengthen stride. The researchers shortened other ants' stride length by cutting off the critters' feet and lower legs, reducing their legs to stumps.
By manipulating the ants' stride lengths, the researchers could determine whether the insects were using an odometer-like mechanism to measure the distance, or counting off steps with an internal pedometer.
The ants on stilts took the right number of steps, but because of their increased stride length, marched past their goal. Stump-legged ants, meanwhile, fell short of the goal.
After getting used to their new legs, the ants were able to adjust their pedometer and zero in on home more precisely, suggesting that stride length serves as an ant pedometer."

this bought on a lot of outrage and reaction from amoeba equivalent animal activists.... in the form of juvenlie bloggers and drama queens.....and they used words like "karma whore".i plead stupidity and know not what and who is karma whore......

i do remember reading that the nobel prize winner in science... dr. richard feynmann had done a test on ants.... in a fit of boredom (and perhaps the sheer frustration of the inertia of his physics)... that he tried a memory test of sorts on ants......and tried to ferry them from point A to point B....using a certain amount of sugar.
the outraged ant lovers ..please note the act of kindness... and readers plz note that this wasnt a study of national importance.... but one of domestic disaster as the good mrs. feynmann had to deal with the loss of sugar and the sudden appearance of an swarm of ants....

i am unable to get poetic or even be literary about an ants leg in an abstract way.....im sure they are beautiful(!!!) and are amazing subjects of study......
but heres what is apparently true...( and very ridiculous too)....
that there are tips and conclusions of how toc athc ants,their dietary perferances....(they r VeRY fond of seeds).
activities like ant rearing and ant fighting are popular(dont ask in which circles...),there are certain insecta which MIMIC ANTS(!!!!!).....

Ants have been acclaimed for their wisdom since ancient times. They stand out at, or near, the peak of invertebrate development, displaying memory, learning, and the ability to correct mistakes. However, these intelligences are trapped inside rigid and programmed behavior patterns.

WHATEVER.....

theres jsut a couple of things that i have to mention...... in relation to ants....

there are frequent un precedented ant attacks in muy room in the hostel. i find ants ants crawling about all over the floor and the spew forth in the most lewd manner from all corners and crevices in between the tiles. the only effective way of dealing with this is...."puddling"
puddling is a system of flooding paddy nurseries.... a pre requesite in paddy agronomics to obtain a good crop.
puddling in muy room refers to the rapid emptying of about half a dozen buckets of water in muy room..... in the absecne of a hose pipe.... and allowing the water to naturally drain(read flow out) and artificially evaporate( read dry under the fan).

secondly.... there is a certain gentleman whom i had net some months back.... who "feeds" ants every evening while he stomps about on his evening walk.this comprises of sprinkling a mixture of flour and what not on the ant hills he sees on the roadside.
his rather beeligerent logic ...or counter question left me dumb founded....."who else will feed the ants..."

so much for them ants.....!!!!!!