The Invisible Mentor

“What Ants Can Teach You” was inspired by Jim Rohn‘s Ant Philosophy, which he sums up at the end of the article, “Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can,” but I would like to add to the conversation and deepen it somewhat. Ants are from the Formicidae family, and with wasps and bees belong to the Hymenoptera order.

Ants Facts

• There are about 10,000 species of ants
• Ants can lift up to 50 times their weight
• There are three classes of ants: queen ants, worker ants and male ants
  • Queen ants lay eggs and live five to 30 years
  • Worker ants are female, do most of the work, rarely become queens, or reproduce and live one to three years. They may keep the same job all their lives or job hop a few times. The colony cannot survive without worker ants
  • Male ants do not work. They mate with young queens and die shortly after. They live a few weeks to months.
• Ant nests can reach 20 feet below the ground
• Ants suppress pest population and aerate the soil

What Ants Can Teach You

1. Social insects: They live and work in communities, and members rely on each other. They feed and protect each other
2. Successful survivors: Able to survive and adapt to many different habitats
3. Robust: Can recover from setbacks. When one or more ants fail, the group can still perform all the tasks
4. Self-organized: Activities are decentralized and they get the job done without supervision. Members have specific functions to perform such as lay eggs, gather food, protect the colony and so on, depending on their size
5. Well developed senses, especially smell. They use scent trails to find their way back home after traveling great distances, up to 700 feet from their nests, and they communicate with each other using pheromones

In summary, ants: understand the importance of community building, able to pick themselves up when adversity comes knocking, resilient and can work in many environments, does what needs to be done without supervision, and use their senses to spot opportunities. Aren’t these great lessons to learn?

YouTube video of Ants!

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants! compliments of the Science Channel, click here.

Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife

If you cannot view the YouTube video of Ants create a lifeboat in the Amazon jungle – BBC wildlife, click here.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Further Reading

The Ant Philosophy by Jim Rohn

Sources Referenced

AskNature.org

How Stuff Works

Wikipedia

Photo Credit: Yahoo via Apture

Related posts:

1. What Fables Can Teach Us
2. Why A Lion Can Teach You Gratitude

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