ANTS: ALL FOR ONE AND ONE FOR ALL

ACTIVITY 1. Read the following pieces of a text and answer the questions.

ANCIENT INSECTS

Ants are amazing creatures which have lived on Earth for about 130 million years. If they didn’t
know how to share and treat each other with respect, they probably wouldn’t be here today.

1. Find a conditional sentence and identify the type.

2. How long have ants existed? ___________________.
3. Give a synonym of “approximately”: ___________________.

HOME SWEET HOME

Ants live in colonies and there can be millions of ants in a colony. Each colony has got its own smell
and the ants have got a sense of belonging to a colony based on this smell. The moment an ant
leaves its colony, it loses its smell. It won’t be able to return to that colony afterwards.

1. How many ants are there in a colony? ________________________.

2. An ant knows how to find its colony by ___________________.
3. Give a synonym of “teamm”: __________________.
4. Give a synonym of “later”: ____________________.

WOMEN RULE

The leader of the colony is the queen, whose job is to lay eggs. The male’s only job is to help the
queen reproduce. Once he has done that, he dies. All the workers are female.

1. Why is the queen so important? __________________.

2. Give a word for this definition: The person who tells people what to do is the _____________
WORKING HARD

Each female ant has got a job. Some workers have got the job to search for food. Once these ants
find food, they leave a special smell for the others to follow. Each ant that follows adds to that
smell until all the ants go in one line, transporting all the food back to the colony. In some ant
species, there is a special ant whose job is to transport liquid food back to the colony in a second
stomach. When other ants touch her, she “kisses” them and gives them the liquid in her stomach.
Other ants are in charge of cleaning and they clean out all the rubbish in the colony. There are even
ants whose job is to clean out dead ants!

1. Complete the sentence

a. When you see one long line of ants, they are probably__________________________.
2. Give a synonym of “task”: _________________.
3. Give an example of a job the ants do : ________________________________.

OTHERS FIRST

If your life were in danger, how would you behave? Would you think of your own well-being or the
well-being of others? Well, if an ant finds itself in a dangerous situation, it will always put the good
of the community before its own personal safety. This sometimes means risking its life!

1. Find two conditional sentences and identify the type.

2. Complete:
a. The good of the community is so important to an ant that it
______________________________________________.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

Ants move as a group. If something stands in their way, they usually go round it. Sometimes, they
find creative solutions to obstacles. In one study, a line of ants was walking along a path and they
came to a hole. One of the ants simply lay down and let the others walk over it. Once all the others
had passed, this considerate ant got up and joined the line again. If it hadn’t helped its friends, it
would have taken them all much longer to reach their destination.

If humans were a little more like ants, maybe they would get along much better.

1. Find three conditional sentences and identify the type.

2. Find a synonym of “a research experiment” : ___________________.
3. Complete
a. In the study mentioned, the considerate ant helped its friends to___________________.