Ant : The Tiny Teacher English(chap-1) Class-7 NCERT

                                                  Ant : The Tiny Teacher

Ø  The smallest but the wisest and intelligent creature amongst all the insects is the ant. It is tiny but hard-working creature.

Ø  An ant uses its feelers or antennae to talk to other ants or to pass its messages.

Ø  Ants greet  other ants by touching their feelers or antennas.

Ø  The commonest among the ants are the black and the red ants.

Ø  Ants live in their comfortable homes called ‘nests’ or ‘anthills’.

Ø  Each anthill has hundreds of little rooms and passages. In some of these rooms, the queen ant lays eggs.

Ø  When the queen ant lays eggs, other ants act as nurseries for the young ones called ‘grubs’.

Ø  Worker ants have reserved quarters, who spend most of their time for searching food. Some rooms of the anthill serve as storehouses for this food.

Ø  Soldiers have separate barracks, who guards other ants.

Ø  No worker ant ever tried to live in a soldiers house.

Ø  No worker, or soldier, or cleaner ant never harms a grub.

Ø  The queen ant is the mother of the entire population of the ant colony. It lives for about fifteen years.

Ø  The queen ant has a pair of wings but bites them off after its ‘wedding flight’.

Ø  The ‘wedding flight’ takes place on a hot summer day when the queen leaves the nest and goes to high up in the air to meet the male ant called ‘drone’.

Ø  On its return to earth after wedding flight, the queen ant gets rid of its wings and does nothing but lay eggs.

Ø  Eggs hatch and grubs come out. Soldier ants guard them, workers feed and clean them, they also carry the grubs daily for airing, exercise and sunshine.

Ø  Two or three weeks later, grubs become cocoons and lie without food or activity for three weeks more. Then the cocoons break and perfect ants appear.

Ø  New ants learn their duties from old ants as workers, soldiers, builders, cleaners etc.

Ø  After a few weeks training, the small ants are ready to go out into the big world for work.

Ø   An ‘anthill’ is not only a home for the ants but also for some other creatures like beetles, lesser breeds of ants and the greenfly.

Ø  The ants allow these alien creatures to live in their nests for several reasons like:

(i) Some give off pleasant smell to the ants senses,

(ii) others give sweet juices,

(iii) some are just pets or playthings for them,

(iv )the greenfly acts as cow by giving honeydew(like milk) to them.

Ø  The life of ant is ver peaceful because they do their share of work intelligently and happily without hurting others. They never fight with other members of the group.

Ø  Humans have not yet learnt to put his learning to good use. They may still have to learn many things from this tiny teacher- hard work, sense of duty, cleanliness, care for the young ones, and above all, a firm loyalty to the land where they live in.