How do ants predict the weather?

Ants are small reptiles on the earth and can be seen everywhere. Knowing that ants can predict weather changes, I became more interested in observing ants.

Ants are busy crawling all day. Sometimes they act separately, sometimes in groups, as if someone were silently directing.

I found that at any time, the two tentacles on the ant's head are always shaking from side to side. Whether a single ant is looking for food or several ants are carrying food, their tentacles are always shaking, which is really interesting. So what is the function of their tentacles? I became interested in it.

After many observations, I found that when ants met their partners on the way after finding food, the tentacles of the two ants swung very frequently, as if they were having a cordial conversation. Soon, they moved an army from the cave and headed for the place where there was food. Ants can't talk. How can they transmit information by swinging their antennae? The science and technology tutor told us that under different circumstances, some glands of ants can release different chemicals, which are dispersed in the air and produce different smells, and ants have sensitive olfactory organs on their antennae, so that ants can feel full odor information through the constant swinging of their antennae. It turns out that they are talking in smell language, which is wonderful! I've learned that when ants look for food, their tentacles will swing from side to side and feel the taste of food in the air.

Ants have a strong ability to find their way. Although they are so small, sometimes they can go on expeditions to tens of meters without getting lost. Do ants also find their way by tentacles? I did this experiment. I caught the ant on the way home from the ground, carefully cut off its two tentacles and put them back. Wow! After wandering around the ground, the ants stay in one place. Even if the ant nest is close to it, it can't go back to the nest. Why do ants have no tentacles and will not lose the ability to find their way? After reading the relevant information, I learned that ants leave a chemical called tracer hormone where they walk, and ants feel the smell of this chemical through the olfactory receptors on their antennae to find their way. No wonder I dropped a few drops of essential balm where the ants walked. When the ants came back, the smell left on the road was interrupted. They just wandered around like headless flies and couldn't find their way.

Ants have no ears. How can they listen to the sound? I caught some ants and put them in two transparent bottles. The antenna of an ant in a bottle was cut off. When the ants in both bottles were unwilling to move, I patted the sides of the bottles. Alas, the ants in the bottle were so scared that they crawled around the bottle, but those ants who had cut their tentacles turned a deaf ear and made no response. Even if they set off firecrackers nearby, they were indifferent. From this point of view, the auditory organs of ants grow on the antennae. Without tentacles, they will become deaf. In order to verify how sensitive the ant's hearing is, I gently dropped a sewing needle into the bottle of the ant with tentacles. As a result, the ants were disturbed.

How do the tentacles of ants hear sounds? I picked some ants with very big heads and observed them under a magnifying glass. It turns out that the tentacles of ants are not bare, and there is a circle of very dense and extremely slender long hair on the whip joint of the tentacles. When there is sound, these long hairs will cause a reaction and vibrate frequently. Isn't this auditory hair?

Because I often catch ants in my hand and observe them, I also find a strange problem: intact ants will jump down from my hand bravely after crawling a few times, while ants who have lost their tentacles will become particularly timid, always crawling around in my hand, beating around the bush, and no one dares to jump down, as if dying. I wonder, does this mean that the tentacles of ants have the functions of maintaining balance, sensing spatial position and supervising movement?

Ants can predict the weather. If it rains, they will move to high places in droves. So what do ants rely on to predict the weather? After looking for the answer from the Encyclopedia of Biology, I learned that it was going to rain, and the concentration of water vapor in the air increased, which was felt by the sensitive receptors of ant antennae, thus predicting the future weather.

After long-term observation and analysis, I think the main functions of ant antennae are as follows:

1, highly sensitive sense of smell, because looking for food, finding the way, and transmitting information with companions all depend on ants' tentacles.

2, keen hearing function, can help ants to accept external information and avoid danger.

3, sports function, feel your own spatial position, keep your body balanced, and ants without tentacles can't move even on the flat ground.

In a word, the antenna of an ant is the most important organ in its life, which is more important than any other organ such as eyes. Its two tentacles, like two antennas of a TV set, constantly receive external information.

Small ants and tiny tentacles contain such profound knowledge, which is really admirable and thought-provoking. What does this do to mankind?

According to the principle that bats can emit and receive ultrasonic waves, people invented clairvoyance-radar. Then, can't we also invent a new tester by imitating ant tentacles? Nowadays, all kinds of detection and calculation systems tend to be miniaturized and miniaturized. It is desirable to have a thinner receiving or generating element capable of detecting and storing a large amount of information in a small range. Isn't the antenna of ant a multifunctional subminiature component? If we imitate the biophysical and biochemical mechanism of ant tentacles and develop better equipment, wouldn't it have broad prospects for our aerospace, navigation and military fields, as well as our daily study, work and life?