Army Ants

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Term Paper Title	Army Ants
# of Words	812
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	3.25

Army Ants

Army Ants

Anthony Palmieri
November 20, 1996
Contemporary Science Topics

     A quote made by Lewis Thomas, "Ants are so much like human beings as to
be an embarrassment. They farm fungus, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies
into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, and exchange
information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television."  I am going
to focus this report on the part of the quote, "..launch armies into war..,"
which sets a metaphor of ants and our armies in today's society. Ants have many
tactics, so to speak, that are similar to the way our armies have when going to
war.
     Ants have many different roles in their society. One of the main roles
that army ants or soldier ants have is that they forage in masses for food.
These masses of ants travel together and are able to overcome and capture other
social insects and large anthropoids, they may occasionally kill larger animals
but they do not eat them. As the need for food for the larvae increases, food
gathering raids become more intense.
     The hunting raids made by ants are carried out by "armies" of thousands
of ants and set out from the bivouac in various directions. They form two or
three parties going out simultaneously in different directions for 100 yards or
more. In the U.S. army we attack countries in different areas to weaken the
force we are attacking. We send out thousands of troops in various directions
and try to surround the source of the location being attacked. For instance, if
there are several locations that needed to be attacked to weaken the enemy, like
their weapon storage or air force base, we send several sets of troops to attack
each individual location. This is very similar to the way army ants set out on a
hunting raid. They will send out thousands of ants at once in two or three
different directions.
     When ants go out on their raids, a subgroup called Dorgline ants, walk
along margins of the trails as though protecting the smaller individuals in the
center. Dorglines are large soldiers that broaden the trail where it follows a
narrow ledge of bark and twigs or smooth the path where it crosses a rough plate
and they do this with their own body. They do this because footing for the large
ants is better along the margins than in the midst of dense mass of scurrying
ants.
     When the army wants to invade or occupy a county, they usually ...

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