Small they may be, but ants are intelligent and surprise with many characteristics. Here are 17 facts about ants that show the pesky crawlers in a completely different light.

1. some ant species consist exclusively of females. This is the species Mycocepurus Smithii, whose queens produce their offspring alone and have no need for males.

2. ants have been around for about 130 million years, i.e. since the time of the dinosaurs.

3. it is estimated that there are 10 trillion ants on earth.

4. the largest ant measured (Titanomyrna Giganteum) was almost 7cm long and had a wingspan of 15cm.

5 Since ants have been around since the time of the dinosaurs, they have already survived the extinction of the dinosaurs and have even spread significantly since then.

6. ants are clean creatures: the worker ants carry rubbish from their nest to a special dump.

7. the biomass of all ants in the world corresponds to the biomass of all humans.

8. 40,000 ant brains could be the first human brain. In other words, the human brain consists of around 10,000 million brain cells, while the ant's brain consists of 25,000. 

9 Ants also need to sleep. The queen of certain ant species sleeps for over nine hours a day, 92 times for 6 minutes each time. Worker ants, however, are only allowed to sleep for four and a half hours a day.

10 Some ants can carry up to 100 times their own body weight, even when sitting vertically on a smooth disc.

11 Ants started growing their food 50 million years earlier than humans. They even fertilised their fields.

12 Ants can live up to 30 years, giving them the longest life expectancy of all insects.

13 Male ants only live to mate with the queen, after which they die.

14 Soldier ants protect their colony by blocking the entrances with their heads.

15 Each ant colony has its own special chemical profile. This is how ants know whether another ant comes from their colony or a neighbouring one.

16 The ant colony can extend over several kilometres.

17 Ant colonies wage wars among themselves. For example, a queen can kill a neighbouring queen and steal her workers, or she can order her workers to steal eggs from a neighbouring colony.