Brain Stuff #1

An occasional series on the brain to test your knowledge and amaze you.

What has the largest brain in comparison to its size? 

a) Elephants
b) Dolphins
c) Ants
d) Humans

The ant.

An ant's brain is about 6 per cent of its total body weight - if we were to apply the same percentage to humans, our heads would have to be nearly three times as large, making us all look rather like the Mekon or Morrissey.
An average human brain weighs 1.6 kg ( 3.5 lb) , which is a little over 2 per cent of body weight. An ant's brain weighs approximately 0.3 mg.
Although an ant's brain has only a fraction of the neurons of a human brain, a colony of ants is a super-organism. An average-sized nest of 40,000 ants has about the same number of brain cells as a person. Ants have been around for 130 million years and there are about 10,000 trillion of them at large as we speak. The total mass of ants on the planet is , slightly heavier than the total mass of human beings.
There are about 8,000 known species of ant. Ants account for about 1% of all the insects on earth. The total number of insects in the world has been calculated at one quintillion (or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000.)
Ants sleep for only a few minutes a day and can survive for nineteen days under water. A wood ant can manage for twenty-four days without its head. A single ant cannot live alone outside the colony, head on or not.
Ants appear to have photographic memories to help them navigate. They seem to take a series of snapshots of landmarks. Scientists do not understand how ants' tiny brains can store so much information.
Ants are not stronger than people. Though ants can lift many times their own weight, this is only because they are small. The smaller an animal is, the stronger its muscles are in relation to its body mass. If people were the same size as ants, they would be equally strong.

"Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies capture slaves, engage in child labour, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television,"  LEWIS THOMAS

How is this information useful?  I've been thinking that myself.   
Let me know what you think...


Source:"The Book of General Ignorance" by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson from the TV Program QI