Those flying ants

In the highly unlikely event that you are an ant and you are reading this, then good luck – you're going to need it.

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For we are approaching Flying Ant Day – the few hours a year in which the six-legged arthropods emerge from the shelter of their colonies to reproduce in the land of giants.
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You may see only vast and vaguely-menacing clouds of insects, but as we watch them turn to slime on our windscreens, it's worth considering the life-or-death enormity of this entomological D-day.

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It's the event in the social calendar, says Paul Pearce-Kelly, a curator and bug expert at London Zoo.

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It's the biggest one-night stand in Britain and we are bang in the middle of the season. Some eager ants took the opportunity to make insect love when conditions were right at the end of June – but he reckons the majority among Britain's 50 ant species are still primed for action.

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They like warm, humid weather and often come out on dusky summer evenings, he says, wistfully.
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That could be any day now, but why the insect equivalent of the mile-high club?

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It's a dispersal thing, Pearce-Kelly explains, killing the romance.

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By sending up ants for nuptial flights, they maximise the chances of breeding and creating colonies elsewhere."
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But post-coital insects must be valiant if they are to survive – and that's only if they're female.

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Hapless males will die in very quick order, while successful females will have to escape the attentions of birds and people, says Pearce-Kelly.

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When they land they lose their wings.

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It's then the very lucky few who find a nook or cranny where they might start to form the basis of a new colony
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It's a tough deal for ant chaps, but the reward for those few females who conceive and form a colony is huge

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Workers are lucky to live for a few months but after one hectic day in the air the ant who becomes a queen can live safely in her colony for up to 15 years, producing millions of young

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So happy Flying Ant Day (Flant Day in America), you ballsy little beasts – fly away and let nothing stand in your way.

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Simon Usborne

Independent