how many neurons does an ant's brain have?
353171
On average, an ant has approximately 100,000 neurons in it's central ganglia.  It's interesting that you ask this, because ant colonies are commonly used to demonstrate the possible behavior of a 'dissociated brain" colony, in which the entire colony is a single organism.  A very large colony of ants could have as many as 1 billion neurons total...still many orders of magnitude less than a human, but pretty bright for an insect!
507816
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurons
428113
It depends upon the species of ant. Some seek out sweets. Others seek out fats (like cheese). Still others swap between sources depending on what's available.
130791
Ant colonies will fight each other, and ants can tell if an ant is from another colony through the use of pheromones, so the ant cannot join another colony.  Ants are also dependent on one another for survival.  They protect each other, and communicate the location of found food by using pheromones.  Without it's colony mates, a single ant will probably starve to death or be killed by other ants or some other predator.
724371
It should be dead by now, the itchy feelings and legs thing, thats all part of your fear of it, its true. When ever at wasp or something as landed on me before and i ve swiped it off, after i feel like its on me. Well, enough with the life story, heres some information on how lomg do ants live....\n\nSome ants can live a long time, while other ants have very short life spans. A species of worker ants in Africa only live for a few weeks, while one queen ant held in a German laboratory was 29 years old! Ants usually live in colonies. At the center of the colony is one or more queen ants -- these are females who lay eggs. Many smaller male ants work hard to feed and care for the queen. Not surprisingly, queens generally live longer than male worker ants. As I learned at a great site called ZoomSchool, ants usually live only 6 to 10 weeks!\n\nHope it helps your eating bug thing :)
45152
What are of you people talking about the ants rule the population. one small caibbean ant colonies combined has the world's population. so ants rule the population (those queen ants can work...wow).
824014
There is a great diversity among ants and their behaviors. They range in size from 2 to about 25 millimetres (about 0.08 to 1 inch). Their color may vary; most are red or black, but other colors can also be seen, including some tropical groups with a metallic lustre.\n\nAnts have colonized almost every landmass on Earth. They can constitute up to 15% of the total animal biomass of a tropical rainforest; in the Amazon the combined weight of the ants is said to be four times larger than that of the tetrapods in the same area. It has also been estimated that the combined weight of all ants exceeds the weight of mankind
1181826
ok the answer is :-\n4th ant says : no no just let him go he is alone and we four lolzz
388395
every insect has 6 legs, so all bees, ants, wasps, flies, flees...also scarabs have 6 (cocroaches and beetles) \nthe only creepy crawlies with more legs are archnides: basicaly spiders and scorpions (which have 8), or millipedes (which have loads)\nthe simple rule though is that if it flies it has 6 legs
124312
Invertebrates can manage this apparent degree of complexity because so much of their behaviour is instinctive. It is preprogrammed into their brains before hatching and is largely unchanging.  That method of storage is highly efficient because the macroscopic brain structure itself can be tailored to support it. This allows for very complex behaviours with relatively little brain mass. The downside is that the animals have little ability to learn and even less ability to respond to change.\n\nIn contrast mammals have very few preprogrammed behaviours, instead they learn most of what they need to know through experience. That makes mammals extremely flexible animals compared to most invertebrates because they can tailor all their behaviour to circumstances. The downside is that it requires a large brain to allow for all the possible circumstances the animal might meet.\n\nTo illustrate this, consider something like the ;structures’ that a spider builds. some species of spiders build complex silk baskets for their eggs. The basket consists of a ‘floor’ and a domed roof, complete with an escape hole for the hatchlings. They are very complex and very impressive without a doubt, but the spider makes them according to an inbuilt program. If that program is disrupted or indeed can not be initiated the spider simply can not cope. If a spider is disturbed just after it has constructed the floor of the basket it can’t simply start again. It has to complete the program cycle. It will spin the domed roof, then lay the eggs in there, and because there is no floor the eggs fall onto the ground an all die. \n\nCan you imagine a bird or squirrel that is disturbed hen it begins making its nest trying to build the sides of the nest on nothing? Nope, that’s because mammals and birds are flexible. The basic of nest building may be inbuilt, but the specifics are the result of learning and adaptations. \n\nAnd that is true of all invertebrate behaviour. An caterpillar will starve to death in a room full of food simply because the food doesn’t have any smell, or a spider that is prevented form spinning a web will starve even when given unlimited amounts of disabled but living insects because it can ONLY hunt when food is caught in a web. Bees will fight to the death to keep other insects out of their hive, but once they are inside the hive and acquire the right smell they will let other insects kill them and take no action at all.\n\nAnd the list of examples goes on and on. Bugs simply are not very adaptable creatures. If they experience something new they simply can not do anything about it at all. And although spiders, ants and so forth can learn their ability is extremely limited. They can exhibit complex behaviour in one limited way, but they can’t readily alter that behaviour. \n\nAnd that is why they can exhibit apparently complex behaviour with a small brain. The complexity is wired in, with no ‘waste’ space. But that comes at the expense of adaptability. In contrast mammals exhibit les complex behaviours but are infinitely more adaptable. Horses for courses.
982229
Ants are neat, and while that other guy was right about 'intelligence' not being a concrete concept, ants certainly can solve very complex problems.  The definitely don't wander around aimlessly and randomly like someone else suggested.  They have  incredible cognitive abilities for navigating from food sources back to their nests.  One of these is known as path integration, ants are able to keep in their memory all the different twists and turns in their path to find food so that when they do find food they can head in a straight line back to their nest.  They are also able to learn the location of different objects in their environment and use these to find their way home if they get off course, like if they get blown away by the wind or something!  When you consider that an ant's brain is smaller than the head of a pin, the amount of information they are able to hold in there and remember and manipulate, is pretty astonishing.  Using electron microscopes and neuroscience techniques, scientists have identified tiny clusters of neurons on the brains of some ants, called mushroom bodies.  They think that these structures are the sites of memory and navigational cognition in the ants. You might also find it cool to know that the navigational systems of ants have formed the basis of the navigational systems developed using artificial intelligence for robots.  And as for the division of labor, I think you are spot on.  Ants (and other eusocial insects) provide the natural world's best examples of self-organising systems and they are way cool and very neat!!!  Science nerds rock-on!
686645
Just imagine an ant crawling on a globe. Heck, you don't have to imagine, catch an ant and put it on a globe and watch it. There is no "end" but the surface area is not infinite.
711162
ants do sleep, or at least have a stage where they respond noticeably worse to external stimuli and are inactive. You just don't see ants sleep because they do that in their nest, not outside. You don't see many people sleep on the streets either, do you?\nWhy we sleep is a still unsolved and very intriguing question. Especially for something that essential. Clear is that people (or animals) can even die for lack of sleep. As it is a complex subject look up more details at the link below.
1048609
yes my dear insects have brain in the form of nerve complexes a network which seem to be like brain and what is the purpose of having a brain that is they are also organism every organism has need to think over its certain life time activities brain help them to coordinate their body with all parts and tell them abt all the physiological functions to be performed at different times
5255
Same as for a termite hill: most of it is inanimated. There might be a hive intelligence, but it couldn't be proven contacted by humans yet, so that's purely speculative. (Not sure about termite or ant hills, but certain about earth on no proof of contact...)
1123614
Ants use their antennae to smell
1135671
No they do not follow the same path. They follow a pheromone trail path set by a forager ant. The ensuing ants will reinforce that path until the food finishes. Yes they know where they are going, as they will also follow the strongest and shortest pheromone trail path.\n\nAlso, through the observation of the sudden infestation of my house with literally hundreds of ants (probably its winter). They find sugar traces in my toilet sink (I was doing some soda and mentos experiment there) :P, and a box of opened cereal at the top of my fridge.\n\nDestroying a path of ants seem to work poorly, as they still continue... they seem to operate much more actively in the day and communicate with other ants with increasing frequency when they are in the trail. Ant poison (chemical but toxic food for ants, which they will feed the queens with) seems to work a few years back and my current batch of ants seem to be taking the bait...