If you have only one queen eventually she will mate with her offsping, then the next queen will mate with her brothers and her sons. Why don’t ants get messed up like the British Royal family?
And this is a Great debate why?
Well, shut my mouth. It’s also illegal to put squirrels down your pants for the purposes of gambling.
Alright,
“Where Ants created or did they evolve?” “Is there an Ant god?”
“What do you think about genetically modified Ants?”
“Should burning Ants be legal?”
“Should we stop the Ant queen monarchy?”
“Ants vs. flying insects”
Are these good enough? Or should you have to quote Neitzsche before it can be declared a debate. You might be right though…maybe this should go in MPSIMS. David?
Actually, I’m thinking General Questions – you did ask a question, after all. Let’s see if some of the Teeming Millions over in GQ can answer it.
'Cause ants don’t have noses and ears. Uh…wait…that ain’t it.
IIRC, a queen ant only mates once and stores the sperm in her body so all the eggs are fertized as she delivers them.
Now somebody tell me I remembered it wrong.
JB
Lex Non Favet Delicatorum Votis
Ants mate before a colony is created. Once a female has mated, she establishes a colony and starts pumping out ant “clones”, I guess you could say. All of the ants of a given type in an ant hill (such as workers) are going to be genetically identical. Most of the ants she produces will be sexless. When she produces males and females, that is only to support the establishment of other colonies.
Once the colony is established, the queen ain’t gettin’ any, so she doesn’t mate with her children.
I thought that new queens would be born, fly off in search of boy ants, who would also have wings. Then they’d pair off and mate in the air. But I could be confusing them with termites.
So basically, wings allow queens to mate with males of other colonies.
With bees, on the other hand, I don’t know. Drones are hanging out with the queen all the time and I’d think most would be here relatives.
Nothing I write about any person or group should be applied to a larger group.
- Boris Badenov