How many eyes of an ant are there?

Ants are one of the most common animals possible to see on every continent. They are from Formicidae family and his family has connection with wasps. It’s possible to see some similar features of ants and wasps. Scientists believe that ants are evolved from wasps 130 million years ago. They survived because their age was also the age of rising flower plants. Today it’s known that ants have over 22.000 species. Ants are living in colonies. Some colonies have over 1 million ants. Ants’ collective work for a colony is still a high research area. It’s easy to identify an ant with its antennas. Also ants have special features like unique eye system. How many eyes of an ant are there?

Oldest fossils of ants are 150 million years old. They hardly survived on the first period of their life but after age of rising flower plants 100 million years ago, they started to adopt earth. 60 million years ago ants were dominating all over the earth.

Ants’ communication way is releasing pheromones. They can smell an ants’ pheromone from 1 km away perfectly. Biting and stinging is their main defend ways. Some species also spray formic acid. Only a few ants’ sting can be fatal.

Ants have compound eyes. Compound eyes are a wall of small lenses. Ants can catch movement easily but their eyes are not preparing high res images like bees. They have also 3 simple eyes to catch the light level.


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