(I'm including an apology at the top of this article about my reputation and the article that got me flagged. You can find the article HERE.)

I can write. It's that rush when you come into steemit and see people blatantly copying and pasting, making a cent that it becomes appealing. I took a step into it there, copied a title to an article, with the impression that it'd just be seen as 'passing the news'. I didn't try beautify the post or try be 'colourful' about it. I made the remark, "Share whatever you want, have fun with Steemit, but give credit to the creators of the content when you can. 🙂 Check this article out for more information on the sweet headline - URL "Article from Justin OConnell, founder of GoldSilverBitcoin"

I wanted to delete the post after @klye had mentioned that it was confusing and misleading but it was too late. A whale had hit me so hard I didn't know I'd been ship-R3kt until the 'The Day Of The Reckoning' or
'Rep-oning' (Over 2 weeks later from when I'd posted that cursed title and URL link.)

KO'ed. Am I dead?

I am sorry. A truly noob mistake. I've learnt my lesson, have spoke to several dolphins and whales about it whom are trying to help me get my reputation back up and running at the moment. I won't do it again. Most of my stuff is original content. I record songs on guitar and even have some guitar lessons posted up. I'd appreciate help with getting my reputation up from any of you as well. I'm currently sitting on minus six which basically means my content is filtered and almost invisible. That makes it even harder for me to get back into the good books. You can check out my blog HERE

I figured I'd write up an article to show people that I can write when I put my mind to it anyway, so here's something interesting that I thought would be sweet to bring to the table.

ANTS

I've been fascinated with ants for a long time. They're everywhere, which can often lead to people taking them for granted, but they truly are one of the most complex and interesting 'superorganisms' on the planet. I've often thought that if there was ever to be an absolutely massive extinction like something that took out the dinosaurs, ants would have the best chance of survival. And cockroaches, maybe. Ants are everywhere after all and that's because they are organised. They are so organised in fact that they've earned the name 'superorganism' because all individuals of the colonies act as a whole. This is similar to when we kick our toe and a message is transferred all the way up through our nervous system to tell our brains, 'OUCH'. Our whole body reacts. Just in the same way all ants react to one another. If a worker is attacked, other workers withdraw and instantly soldiers are sent forward into a defensive and offensive line to fight off the predator.

Ants are organised into 5 classes

1) Princesses - A princess is an unfertilized virgin queen, she has wings and is a flying ant. Princesses take to the skies on a warm, humid summers day also known as the 'nuptial flight.' Once mated, they scurry along the ground to find a suitable nesting place to lay their eggs. They are now becoming a Queen. They clip their own wings and use them to feed their new family.

2) Queen ants are tough. They've shed their wings in order to feed the new colony. From there, they can live for a range of 1 to 30 years (Ant queens are estimated to live 100 times as long as solitary insects of a similar size) and produce millions of offspring for years. She even chooses the gender and role of the babies.

3) Workers - Ants born as workers, spend their first days of adult life caring for the queen and young. They then participate in digging and general nest work, later to become hunter-gatherers and defenders of the nest. Workers cannot mate; however, because of the Haplodiploid sex-determination in ants, workers of a number of species can lay unfertilised eggs that become fully fertile, haploid males. Haplodiploidy is a sex-determination system where males develop from unfertilized eggs and are haploid, and females develop from fertilized eggs and are diploid.

4) Soldier - Soldiers are sterile female ants and are the military unit of the ant colony. They're bigger and have larger mandibles than worker ants. It defends the nest and the colony on foraging trips and can assist the workers by cutting and carrying larger, heavier objects.

5) Drones - Drones have wings and are the only males in ant colonies. They're born from unfertilised eggs and chase down the princesses on the 'nuptial flight.' Once they've had their fun, they die. Drones only survive a few months during the mating period. Such is life.

Interesting things about ants:

1) Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight. Imagine if you could lift 20 times your own body weight. A child could pick up a car.

2) They'll find the food, eventually. Don't worry about a vacuum ;)

3) When foraging, ants leave a pheromone trail so they know where they’ve been. Other ants will tag onto this path and follow. If an ant finds something valuable it lets off a particular type of pheromone that's basically a way of calling out to other ants, "I've struck gold lads, come get it!"

4) The way they live together is like clockwork. The new-borns are raised as 'slaves' and all have particular jobs set out for them through their DNA. They live this way until the day they die, never rebelling, always committed and loyal to expansion, the colony and the queen. Very organised!

5) The activity of ants aerates the soil, making it easier for water and oxygen to get through. They also contribute organic matter.

Some Pictures & Descriptions of Ants



This is an image of fire ants forming a bridge. They're not great swimmers but they can float, and they use this to their advantage by holding onto each other and forming these long rafts & bridges to get across water and keep from washing away in the current.



These are workers from a Leaf-cutter Ant colony carrying leaves back to the nest. This isn't for feeding purposes, but is for growing purposes. They use the leaves to grow a special type of fungus which they use to feed their offspring. Miniature agriculture.

Several ant species herd aphids in much the same way that humans herd animals. Chemicals on the ants' feet tranquillise and subdue colonies of aphids, keeping them close-by as a food source. Aphids excrete a waste product called 'honey dew' which contains glucose, fructose and sometimes trisaccharides.

Camponotus saundersi is an ant species that commits 'suicide-bombing' in act of defense for the colony. When attacked, it ruptures its insides and spews forth a defensive and poisonous sticky secretion towards the predator.

Cyphomyrmex Ants are another type of farming ant. In order to grow yeast, they lay down a graveyard of dismembered insect parts and spread spores over it. They harvest the yeast when it's grown and use it to feed their larvae. The ants are extremely colourful with their graveyards as well, usually forming a bright red, blue or green patch depending on the food source they bring back. They particularly prefer beetle carcasses.

Thanks for reading, hope you like the article :)