OK, so we know about the famous contribution of methane to the atmosphere by cows and its baleful (no pun intended) effects on the ecology. Although too polite to mention, our own methane production is far more ecologically harmful, I believe.
Do ants fart? Because if so, all those little puffs could add up to a lot of methane. :eek:
Isn’t it kind of misleading to put “ants” in one category, and “humans” in another? There are tens of thousands of species of ants. A fairer comparison would be ants vs. mammals, but even then, there are three or four times as many species of ants.
No. There many different kinds of ants, but they are all ants. Thinking they are different is bad, people also come in different kinds, but it is ignorant of you to say they are not all people. Like all different ants are ants so if you want to compare something to all mamals remember that all kinds of ants are insects, like spiders, or slugs so you would weant to comepare insects to mammals.
But more importantly krill are the most massive species. But that is only animal species, plants are more massive still. Humans are not even one of the biggest animals. I know this because people eat other animals like cows, and if there werren’t mroe cow than people than people would run out of cow pretty quickly.
Ants belong to the order Hymenoptera, as do bees, wasps, and my fourth-grade teacher. Ants become ants in family Formicidae (as do certain types of kitchen counter tops).
Humans belong to family Hominidae.
Would it be fair to compare biomass of the two families?
If we add family Euphausiidae (krill), Bovidae (cows), and Termitidae (most termites), then cast Pesci, DiNero, and Pacino, we could make a kick-ass movie about the five families.
I’m working on it. So far I found this about red fire ants, mostly about how they excrete phosphoric acid (ant bombs?). I am sure there are interesting ramifications here:
Quantification of phosphoric acid in worker fecal droplets and larval anal liquid of S. invicta was performed. Phosphoric acid was trimethylsilylated using N,O Bis(trimethylsilyl) trifluoroacetamide and the tris(trimethylsilyl) phosphate was analyzed using gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Phosphoric acid made up 2.13 ’ 1.08% (mean ’ SD) of the dry weight of worker fecal droplets and 2.09 ’ 0.72% of the larval anal liquid. The rate of phosphoric acid production in workers was 0.08 ’ 0.024 ug/ant/day (mean ’ SD). Because the hindgut of red imported fire ant larva is separated from the midgut, the excretory products in larval anal liquid are primarily of metabolic origin. The presence of phosphoric acid in larval anal liquid demonstrates that red imported fire ants excrete phosphoric acid.
An ant has a stomach, intestines, and an anus. That’s close enough to human physiology that I’d say that if any gas comes out the anus, it can be called a fart.
My first thought when I saw this was, “that can’t be right.” The total mass of trees alone would have to be far more massive than all those ants. Then I realized that you just need to read your own citations just a little more carefully. The second link above does not say that ants are “15 to 30% of the world’s biomass.” It says that ants and termites comprise “up to 1/3 (33%) of the terrestrial animal biomass.” So we’re not counting krill, plankton, trees, fungi, and so forth.
As for the cattle mentioned later, the total biomass of cattle exceeds that of humans, but the total number of living humans exceeds the total number of living cattle (cows weigh more than people).
As I understand it, cows (and possibly other ruminants?) produce a disproportionate amount of methane due to their unique intestinal flora. Is this true?
As a kid, I can remember using a magnifying glass to light ant farts…but only on college-aged ants.
However, it would be interesting to know what an ant fart smells like - so, in an effort to fight ignorance, I promise that this summer I will get a bunch of ants drunk on beer and baked beans - then pull out a straw, bend down and stick that straw in my nose and inhale.
