ants

* The combined weight of the earth's ants outweighs that of humans, and they have the highest population of any animal on earth.

* They are prolific: the only places without an indigenous ant population are Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland and a handful of remote tropical islands.

* There are more than 12,000 different species of ant, ranging in size from 2mm to 25mm (about an inch).

* African driver ants are so vicious they have been known to kill humans. Although cases are rare, babies or already unconscious adults are occasionally found killed by the creatures, which attack in swarms of up to 100,000.

worker ants tend to take greater risks as they get older. Scientists have shown that this behavioural trait benefits the colony because certain risky activities, such as foraging far from the nest, are best done by ants coming to the end of their useful lives – it doesn't pay to put young workers in high-risk jobs.

As a result, younger ants tend to do housekeeping chores around the nest, which is inherently safer than travelling further afield.

In evolutionary terms, worker ants are the supreme altruists because they dedicate their lives to bringing up the offspring of another individual – their queen – while remaining sterile themselves. This is also true of many other social insects, which perplexed Charles Darwin and generations of biologists who came after him because it appeared to contradict the central idea of evolution – leaving behind as many of your own offspring as possible.

Adult ants cannot chew and swallow solid food. Instead they swallow the juice which they squeeze from pieces of food. They throw away the dry part that is left over ... The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants.

Ants can lift 20 times their own body weight. An ant brain has about 250 000 brain cells. A human brain has 10,000 million so a colony of 40,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human.