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StupidPencil t1_iz6g54u wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#872,210)

Note that ants and other social insects do have an ability to regurgitate stomach content to share it with other nestmates. It's called trophallaxis. It effectively allows nutrients and other biochemical to be freely distributed throughout a whole colony, acting kinda like a circulatory system.

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Krail t1_iz7vua7 wrote

Replying to Otherwise_Day_4485 (#872,809)

I don't know the answer for sure, but the prevalence of farting in Humans is generally a consequence of microbes in our gut digesting our food for us and putting off gasses as a byproduct. There are other reasons gasses end up in your digestive tract, but this is the big one.

I don't know if ants are as reliant on microbes for their digestion as we are, but they definitely have less room for gas in their guts. But then, you'd expect ant farts to be tiny anyway.

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financial2k t1_izsrj1k wrote

Super interesting question. Something like throwing-up just isn't in the cards at those scales due to the lack of inertia and overwhelming electrostatic, Van-der-waals and other effects. (Take a set of tweezers and try to do some kind of art at those scales and you will know what I am talking about)

Even the air feels like going through molasse to an insect according to Kurzgesagt, which do research their stuff.

Yet it seems getting food out of their stomach is part of their nature:

>Ants have two stomachs

Ants have one stomach where they hold and consume their own food and another stomach to hold food they share with other ants. This allows the ants that forage for food to feed the ants that remain in the nest to tend to the queen.

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Any cell can be poisoned. That includes any multicellular organism. The less surface you have per body-weight the better you generally do when poisoned. The smaller you are the less favorable your survival in exactly those scenarios. I cannot answer beyond that.

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