![]() ![]() Some workers can carry 50 times their own body weight. ![]() Worker ants, the most visible colony members, are females that never reproduce, but instead forage for food, care for the queen's offspring, work on the nest, and protect the community. In some species, male ants (known as drones) often have only one role-mating with the queen. Queens lay thousands of eggs to ensure the survival of the colony. ![]() Communities are headed by a queen or queens-some polygynous species can have as few as two or up to thousands of queens. Instead of leaving the hurt ants behind, other ants will carry them back home where they can heal and participate again in future raidsĪ single ant colony can contain hundreds of thousands of individual ants. Attacking ants can have limbs ripped off or even be decapitated by the termites. Megaponera analis, a small black ant species native to sub-Saharan Africa, wages war on termite nests. (Much like termites, which cause far more severe damage.) Some species, such as army ants, defy the norm and do not have permanent homes. Carpenter ants, which include more than a thousand species in the genus Camponotus, nest in wood and can be destructive to buildings. Diet and behaviorĮnthusiastically social insects, ants typically live in structured nest communities that may be located underground, in ground-level mounds, or in trees. The presence of wings indicates an ant’s fertility-ants with wings are either queens or the drones whose job it is to mate with them. Some ants have wings, which are longer in the front and shorter by their hind legs. Ants can be identified by their elbowed antennae, and narrow "waist" between the abdomen and thorax. AppearanceĪnts range in size from the miniscule up to one inch long, and usually appear black, brown, red, or yellow.Īnts look much like termites, and the two are often confused. ![]()
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