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But the real maths wizards of the animal kingdom are the ants of the Tunisian desert (Cataglyphis fortis). They count both arithmetic and geometry as parts of their mathematical toolkit.

the ant can use one of two tricks for finding its way home, visual landmarks or scent trails.

So evolution endowed the desert ant with a secret weapon: geometry. Armed with its mathematical know-how,

the desert ant is able to"path integrate Â. This means, according to ant navigation researchers Martin Muller and Rudiger Wehner,

These desert ants calculate the distance walked by counting steps. Researchers discovered this by strapping stilts made of pig hairs onto the legs of the ants.

The ant's stilts made each individual step longer than it would have otherwise been,

making them overestimate the distance home. The ants calculate the direction they walk by calculating the angle of their path relative to the position of the sun,

using the same rules of trigonometry that were taught to me in the tenth grade. And what's more, the ants constantly update their calculations to correct for the sun's march across the sky.

All that in a nervous system comprised of as few as 250 000 neurons (compared to the approximately 85 billion neurons in the human.

According to the survey, the majority of pest control operators from Europe, Africa, Australia and North america said bed bugs were the most difficult insect pest to control, more so than ants, termites and even the formidable cockroach.

locusts, grasshoppers, cockroaches, ants and maggots, just to name a few. As for me, please pass the barf bag.

#Why Elephants Are Afraid of Ants and Not Mice Elephants are terrified more of ants than mice.

Mice are supposed to strike terror into the hearts of elephants-at least if Disney cartoons are to be believed.

Researchers have discovered that ants are the bane of elephants lives, with the giants of the African savannah steering clear of trees infested with them just in case they crawl up their sensitive trunks.

The experts who made the discovery believe ants act as bodyguards for some plants to keep trampling elephants at bay.

where these little ants are up against these huge herbivores, protecting trees and having a major impact on the properties of the ecosystems in

Swarming groups of ants that weigh about 5mg each can and do protect trees from animals that are about a billion times more massive,

The discovery that elephants dislike ants came when Dr Palmer and colleague Dr Jacob Goheen noticed elephants avoiding a species of acacia tree in the Kenyan plains.

if they were home to guardian ants. The elephants avoided those trees like a kid avoids broccoli,

It seems that elephants simply do not like ants swarming up the insides of their trunks and I cant say I blame them.

LOCAL TREATS Thailand Dishes include fried giant red ants, crickets and June beetles Colombia oefat-bottomed ants are a popular snack,

fried and salted Papua new guinea Sago grubs in banana leaves are a local delicacy Ghana Winged termites are collected and fried, roasted,

The risk is that we become mindless ants following endless crumbs of digital data. oepeople tend to ask

Home improvement blog Apartment Therapy suggests using cucumbers to keep ants away, along with other natural repellents that keep multi-legged home invaders at bay.

but what about the ants finding refuge from the summer heat in your home? Apartment Therapy serves up a few tips that we hadnt seen before,

As summer approaches, ants flock to kitchens on the hunt for food crumbs. Ants are appalled by cucumbers;

therefore, the cucumber slices work best when placed near cracks or other areas where ants may enter the home.

You will need, of course to change out those discs every so often as they spoil, and youd probably want to put them on top of wax paper

#Zombie Ants Controlled by Four New Species of Fungi A stalk of the newfound fungus species Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani,

grows out of a zombie#ants head in a Brazilian rain forest. Originally thought to be a single species, called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis,

of which can mind control#ants#cientists announced last week. pics) The fungus species can infect an ant,

take over its brain, and then kill the insect once it moves to a location ideal for the fungi to grow

It is tempting to speculate that each species of fungus has its own ant species that it is adapted best to attack#

Healthy Camponotus rufipes ants scamper across a Brazilian forest floor. The four newly identified zombie#fungi species use different techniques to spread after infecting an ant, the researchers found.

Some of the fungi species create thin infection pegs#that stick out from a victims body

and infect passing ants, Hughes said. Other fungus species develop explosive spores on infected ants bodies.

When other ants come near the cadavers, the shooting spores can hit the unwitting passersby, turning them too into zombie ants.

Lodged in a zombie ants brain, the fungi species direct#the dying ants to anchor themselves to leaves or other stable places,

as pictured above#roviding a stable nursery#for the fungus. For instance, as the Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani fungus is about to kill the ant, the insect bites down hard into whatever substance its standing on.

This attachment is so strong that a dead zombie ant can remain stationary even when hanging upside down,

the scientists say. A white fungus stalk (left) of the Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis species begins to poke through the head of a zombie ant two days after death.

Also noticeable are faint, white, slightly fuzzy fungal growths on the ants joints. Once the insect dies

the fungus rapidly spreads through the body. During the first couple days, though, very little evidence of the fungus is visible from the outside.

During later stages of Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis infection, the fungus rapidly consumes the nutrients inside a zombie ant

and begins to colonize the outside of the ants body. The fungus stalk growing from the back of the head also becomes longer and more noticeable.

The mature fungus stalk, shown growing from a zombie ants head during the final stage of infection,

differs among fungi species. For instance, Ophiocordyceps camponoti-rufipedis creates just a single stalk (pictured), while Ophiocordyceps camponoti-balzani forms a forked stalk.

Ants arent the only zombie-fungi hosts#ther insects also fall prey to fungus. Above, a wasp is infected by a Cordyceps fungus species that hasnt yet been named or formally documented.

Unlike ants, many insect species that fall victim to zombie fungi are very difficult to identify after the fungus has spread around their bodies the scientists noted.

The bees behavior seems similar to that of ants that are parasitized and then decapitated from within by other fly larvae from the Apocephalus genus

wasps and ants are popular too, accounting for a whopping 14%global insect consumption. Cicadas, locusts, crickets, dragonflies, flies are spared not either.

#'Alien'Argentine Ants May have met Their Match Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) are among the most aggressive invasive insects in the United states

. But after pushing out native ant species in local ecosystems across the country the little conquerers may have met finally their match.

Researchers found evidence that another alien species the Asian needle ant (Pachycondyla chinensis) is chipping away at The argentine ants'stronghold.

Asian needle ants have already been found from Alabama to New york city to Oregon and their venomous stings can cause allergic reactions in some humans.

While studying a supercolony of Argentine ants in North carolina researcher Eleanor Spicer Rice then a doctoral student at North carolina State university spotted some Asian needle ants a strange sight as Argentine ants usually attack other

ants in their territory. To investigate further Spicer Rice and Jules Silverman a professor of entomology at NC State studied how the two species were spread across a 116-acre (47-hectare) office park in Morrisville N c. Gallery:

Stunning Photos of the World's Ants In 2008 they found Argentine ants in 99 percent of the sample sites within the study area

while Asian needle ants were found in just 9 percent of the sites. By 2011 The argentine ants'reach dropped to 67 percent of the sample sites

while the Asian needle ants had expanded their territory to 32 percent of the sites. The two species shared 15 percent of the sample points the researcher said.

This is the first time we've seen another ant species take territory from Argentine ants Spicer Rice said in a statement.

She explained that Asian needle ants might have an edge because they start reproducing earlier in the spring

while Argentine ants remain quite dormant until late April or May. The Asian needle ant is moving into forests and urban environments at the same time.

And because it is active at cooler temperatures it could move into a very broad range of territory Spicer Rice said.

The researchers say it's not known how Asian needle ants displace other ant species

but their spread could have negative consequences for local ecosystems especially if they push out native ant populations that play a crucial role in dispersing plant seeds.

The team is now studying why Argentine ants are not fighting back against Asian needle ants according to a statement from NC State.

Argentine ants have invaded only to retreat in other parts of the world. They once posed a multi-million dollar pest-control problem in New zealand

but researchers in 2011 found that huge colonies of the ants had disappeared possibly because inbreeding may have left them vulnerable to disease.

And this list runs the gamut with the usual suspects primates chewing on medicinal herbs as well as some more surprising drug-takers such as fruit flies ants

Ants have also been found to medicate their colonies against infection bringing back chemicals with antifungal properties.

#Mysterious'Fairy circles'in African Desert Get New Explanation The bizarre circular patches of bare land called fairy circles in the grasslands of Africa's Namib desert have defied explanation with hypotheses ranging from ants to termites

On the brighter side honeypot ants make an out and out delicious snack according to Joe Sapp an ecology graduate student at the University of California Santa cruz. They are full of nectar

and the cheeky cuckoo receives all of the adoptive mother's attention. 3. Bloodsucking ants Count Dracula isn't the only creature with a taste for bodily fluids:

The tiny endangered Adetomyrma ant from Madagascar drinks the fluids of its own young. After the queen ant gives birth to her larvae she

and the other worker ants gnaw holes in the larvae and suck out the circulatory system fluid known as haemolymph (the insect equivalent of blood).

Luckily the baby ants survive this so-called nondestructive cannibalism but it can't be very pleasant.

It's not clear why the behavior exists but transferring fluids may be a form of social behavior in the ants scientists say. 4. Monkey baby killers Some animals head off motherhood before it starts to spare their babies undue hardship after they're born.

When a male gelada baboon takes over a breeding group from a previous male he usually kills any babies of the former union.

</p><p>The tiny endangered Madagascar-based<em>Adetomyrma</em>ant has a strange way to show love to its kiddos.

The ants practice something known as " non-destructive cannibalism. " When the colony' s queen gives birth to ant larvae she

t say exactly why these ants do this ants have a social behavior of transferring fluids to each other

The baby ants don' t die but sucking blood from the young is a weird way to show vampire affection.</

Their explanations have ranged from grass-killing seeps of hydrocarbons to carnivorous ants to termite feeding patterns.

Apart from a few ants the dead tree trunks were unscathed largely when we first encountered them Mousseau who is also co-director of the Chernobyl

(and killer bees) wasps ants and other bugs Berenbaum said. It's hard to pin down specific data on the number of people attacked annually in the United states by Africanized honeybees:

Other finds include ants beetles wasps midges and mammal hair all crowded together in the amber fragments offering a rich view of the 20-million-year-old forest ecosystem.

The locust's abdomen shows hints of decay and the insect is surrounded by ants inside the amber suggesting the ants might have been carting off the carcass for a meal.

and 2 percent snails ants and grubs. Gorillas live in groups. Groups of gorillas are called troops or bands.

and a few symbiotic ecological relationships such as leaf-cutter ants and their microbial partners, but the approach has never before been applied on this scale for an outbreaking forest nuisance.

But flying ants accounted for a larger proportion of the birds'diet in the treated areas.

such as fungus-farming ants although compared to the ants, which actively feed, nurture and defend their crops,

Fungus that controls zombie-ants has own fungal stalkeran article by Scientific American. An unsuspecting worker ant in Brazil's rainforest leaves its nest one morning.

But instead of following the well-worn treetop paths of its nest mates, this ant stumbles along clumsily,

Within days the stem of a fungus sprouts from the dead ant's head. After growing a stalk,

where they can be picked up by other passing ants. This strange cycle of undead life and death has been documented well

and the Camponotini carpenter ants that it infects. Fossil evidence implies that this zombifying infection might have been happening for at least 48 million years.

Recent research also suggests that different species of the fungus might specialize to infect different groups of ants across the globe.

And close examination of the infected ant corpses has revealed an even newer level of spooky savagery other fungi often parasitize the zombie-ant fungus parasite itself.

Deadly infection This clever Ophiocordyceps fungus depends on ants to reproduce and spread, but it has found an abundant host animal.

As Hughes notes, ants have been incredibly successful, currently comprising an estimated half of all insect biomass worldwide.

One of the first clues that a tropical carpenter ant has become infected with Ophiocordyceps is that it will leave the dry tree canopy

Infected ants behave as zombies, Hughes and his colleagues wrote in a 2011 BMC Ecology paper describing some of the latest findings.

The ant will walk randomly, displaying convulsions that make them fall down and thus preclude them from returning to the canopy,

however, be blamed on the ant. While the manipulated individual may look like an ant, it represents a fungal genome expressing fungal behavior through the body of an ant,

the researchers noted in the paper. Hence the zombie designation. More from Scientific American. Evans suggests that a nerve toxin spurred on by the fungus is at least partly to blame

judging from the uncoordinated movements and hyperactivity of the ants infected, he says. Ants that have been dissected at this stage of infection reveal heads already full of fungal cells.

Eventually, an affected ant will stop on the underside of one leaf, roughly 25 centimeters from the forest floor,

and clamp down on the leaf's main vein. This position appears to be optimal for the fungus's later stage in

which it ejects spores onto the soil directly below.)Biting leaves is not normal ant behavior.

when the infected ant bites onto the leaf vein in it's so-called death grip this atrophy causes it to have lockjaw,

the ant would fall to the ground, destroying the launching point for the fungus's spores.

By that stage, cells from the fungus have grown even more numerous in the ant's body.

They have proliferated around the ant's brain and between surrounding muscle fibers but have not entered the brain,

Ants appear to die within six hours after their final bite. About two to three days later a fungal stalk will start to emerge from the back of the ant's head.

After maturing over the course of weeks the stalk's head will shoot spores onto the soil below.

Foraging worker ants can unwittingly pick up spores as they pass by. The death of an ant outside of its colony and subsequent growth of the fungal stalk might be key adaptations of the fungus,

Ants quickly remove dead nest mates so that dying in the nest would not allow sufficient time for stalk development

and spore release before the dead host ant was ejected, Hughes and his colleagues noted in their BMC Ecology paper.

The doomed ants do not wander too far afield, often ending up within meters of their familiar territory.

And large groups of dead ants are commonly found near colonies. These graveyards can contain anywhere from 50 to hundreds of corpses,

Ants'complex and large social groups are thought to be one of the keys to their global abundance.

The fungus has capitalized on ants'social behavior. Sociality can be thought of as evolution's winning lottery ticket

however, cannot live without the winning ants'continued success. It appears to be an obligate parasite,

local species of ant for it to inhabit, grow and propagate its spores. A specialized but global threat The ants best known for getting zombified by the Ophiocordyceps fungus are tree-dwelling carpenter ants found in Brazil and Thailand,

but the fungus is thought to be distributed broadly in tropical areas around the globe. In fact, the full range of strange behavior observed in Sulawesi

Although many ants in different areas are infected similarly and dispatched in this strange way, the species of fungus infecting them is not at all the same.

Each of these species was associated with a different Camponotus ant species, denoting a high degree of specialization.

Ancient scourge The zombifying fungus's vast geographic distribution also hints at the possibility that it has been possessing ants at least

Research published in Biology Letters in 2010 describes a 48-million-year-old fossilized leaf from Germany that bears the distinctive scars of a bite from an ant's mandible on its main vein.

which depends, in turn, on the carpenter ant colony. Once you're very successful, something else will take advantage of it,

The zombie-ant fungus's doom, of course, is little consolation for the infected ant. But the castration of the ant-killing fungus means that it will not go on to turn other local ants into zombies.

This hobble might, in fact, be one of the reasons the zombie-ant fungus has been so successful over the long term.

as long as there are ants nearby to infect. In addition to the fungicidal fungi scientists have seen also small bugs laying their eggs in the infected ant corpse,

Evans is collecting more zombie ants in Brazil, as part of what he and Hughes have dubbed unofficially the World Ant Tour.

When Evans returned to a field site in Ghana where he had found different genera of possessed ants in the 1970s

Â Â Maurice Leponce, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciencesarmy ants (Eciton Burchelli) in San Lorenzo forest stretch across a gap and permit other members of the colony to walk

Pesticide makes invading ants suicidally aggressiveneonicotinoid insecticides have developed a bad reputation for their unintended and potentially harmful effects on pollinating insects such as bees.

A study in New zealand now shows that the chemical can also change how native and invasive ants interact.

New zealand is facing an invasion of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile), which compete with native southern ants (Monomorium antarcticum).

The insects often meet in urban or agricultural areas, where neonicotinoids are in use. So ecologist Rafael Barbieri, a graduate student in the lab of Philip Lester at Victoria University of Wellington, wondered

Barbieri exposed the ants to extremely low doses of a common neonicotinoid and examined how the insecticide affected each species behaviour.

although they did cut the brood size of the invasive Argentine ant in half. But it was

When the southern ant was exposed to the potent neurotoxins it became much less aggressive towards the invader.

This increased the survival odds of The argentine ant, and could help it to spread. However, when invasive ants were exposed to the insecticides,

they became much more aggressive towards unexposed Southern ants so aggressive, in fact, that they risked their own lives to attack.

As a result, unexposed natives were able to completely eradicate their exposed rivals. The mixed results make it difficult to predict whether,

and how, neonicotinoids will exacerbate the invasion of Argentine ants, says Scott Black, executive director of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation in Portland,

Aphids bees and ants can reproduce asexually. Virgin births sometimes occur among hammerhead sharks turkeys boa constrictors and komodo dragons.

and bean leaves similar trichomes on other plants are known to capture ants aphids bees flies

Then you may discover that ants have to work hard for a living too and before long that chlorophyl is a definite soporific.

which has also been studied in ants. With this study scientists at the University of Queensland have found that the so-called waggle dance bees perform translates that polarized light map of the sky into the movement that guides others.

The new species previously unknown to science include 38 different ants 12 fishes 14 plants eight beetles two spiders one reptile and one amphibian.

This year Academy scientists were able to identify 38 previously unknown ant species seven new plants and two new spider species from Madagascar.

Academy scientist Brian Fisher an entomologist who specializes in the study of ants calls them the glue that holds ecosystems together.

Ants are one of the most important members of ecosystems says Fisher. They turn over more soil than earthworms.

and recent high-res images Fisher and his colleagues can identify which patches of forest are most likely to contain new species of ants based on their elevation vegetation and adjacent habitats.

Ants and other insects provide a better map of true biodiversity. New species unearthed close to homewhile researchers from the California Academy of Sciences are spanning the far reaches of the globe to find new plants animals

because its fruits are removed by ants after falling. The authors are also working with colleagues from University of Sydney to investigate the taxonomic value of aromatic resins which also appear to have therapeutic value.

The water-stressed tropical forest trees support the production of more honeydew a sugary excretion imbibed by the Azteca ants that nest in the laurels'stem cavities.

The mutually beneficial interaction between laurels and ants which also involves tiny sap-sucking bugs called scale insects that make the honeydew is a well-known example of

Their results suggest that trees at drier sites buy insurance for their leaves in the form of beefed-up ant protection

and their defensive ants invest more in one another in drier more stressful conditions Pringle said.

and Azteca ants (Azteca pittieri) Pringle and her colleagues studied the interaction at 26 sites in seasonally dry tropical forests along the Pacific coast of southern Mexico and Central America.

Pringle and her colleagues found that the strength of the tree-ant mutualism--as measured by investment of trees in sugar for ants

and defense of leaves by ants--was greater at sites with longer dry seasons. Laurel trees don't feed ants sugar directly.

Instead they host scale insects familiar to gardeners as common backyard pests which produce the honeydew.

through the scale insects the trees indirectly pay a carbon fee in the form of sugar-rich sap that is distilled into honeydew to the ants in exchange for guard duty.

When ants patrolling the surface of the tree encounter a leaf-eating insect they bite the insect until it falls from the tree Pringle said.

We found that at the drier sites the larger ant colonies were more likely to find such intruders

which are used for food by the trees the scale insects and the ants. Defoliation is a greater potential threat at the drier sites

The fact that laurel trees at drier sites pay their ant protectors higher wages suggests that the potential costs of defoliation outweigh the relatively modest price of supporting more ants.

Pringle and her colleagues used a mathematical model to test this idea looking at the relative costs and benefits of carbon trading between trees and ants under rainy seasons of varying durations.

which ants protect trees from rare but life-threatening defoliation events best fit observations from the 26 sites.

and sunlight may not be the only contributors to a plant's success. Ants in their role as seed dispersers may play an equally important part in determining

-or warm-adapted ants impacts early-blooming spring plants. In Mutualism fails when climate response differs between interacting species the authors assert Timing is everything

In previous research Warren showed that a cold-tolerant ant species Aphaenogaster picea has been displaced in northern Georgia by a warm-adapted ant species Aphaenogaster rudis during three decades of rising

and butterfly migrations seed-setting by plants and the emergence of animals--including ants--from winter dormancy.

and the ants pick up and disperse the seeds. However A. americana drops its seeds weeks before A. rudis begins foraging

A total of eleven ant species and 3066 individuals were observed at the foraging stations. At both sites the later-blooming A. arifolium offspring were dispersed in a manner that suggested that ants picked up its seeds.

However the early blooming A. americana offspring south of the A. picea/A. rudis boundary (where only A. rudis occurs) clustered around the parent plant indicating no dispersal.