- The body of an ant is clearly divided into three sections: the head, the thorax, and the gaster. (The narrow waist is actually within the abdomen, so the part of the abdomen behind the waist is called the gaster.) The waist can be made up of one or two small segments, depending on the species.
- Ants are social insects living in colonies comprised of one or a few queens, and many workers. The queen generally stays deep and safe within a nest. Most ants that you see are workers and these are all females. Depending on species, workers may be similar in size, or come in a range of sizes.
- Ants tend to come in dark or earth tones. Different species are black, earth-tone reds, pale tans, and basic browns.
- Caveat: Ants are very diverse and it is difficult to generalize about them.
Adult Males and Females
When ant colonies reproduce, the new queens and males may be found in the colony. These are "flying ants" and have two pairs of wings. Males generally have small heads, large eyes, large thoraces, and a pair of claspers at the end of the gaster. Once they fly (and mate), males do not live very long. After mating, new queens break off their wings and never fly again. Without wings, they can generally be distinguished from workers by their larger body size, larger thorax and larger abdomen. All workers are females.
An ant-hill, in its simplest form, is a pile of earth, sand, pine needles, or clay or a composite of these and other materials that build up at the entrances of the subterranean dwellings of ant colonies as they are excavated. A colony is built and maintained by legions of worker ants, who carry tiny bits of dirt and pebbles in their mandibles and deposit them near the exit of the colony. They normally deposit the dirt or vegetation at the top of the hill to prevent it from sliding back into the colony, but in some species they actively sculpt the materials into specific shapes, and may create nest chambers within the mound.
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Like all insects, ants have three main parts to their body: a head, a thorax, and an abdomen. Other notable aspects of the ant’s anatomy include the antennae, eyes, mandible, legs, petiole, and gaster
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Some queen ants can live for many years and have millions of babies! Queen ants have wings, which they shed when they start a new nest. When the queen of the colony dies, the colony can only survive a few months. Queens are rarely replaced and the workers are not able to reproduce.
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An ant can lift 20 times its own body weight. If a second grader was as strong as an ant, she would be able to pick up a car! Ants don’t have ears. Ants "hear" by feeling vibrations in the ground through their feet. When ants fight, it is usually to the death! When foraging, ants leave a pheromone trail so that they know where they’ve been. Ants don’t have lungs. Oxygen enters through tiny holes all over the body and carbon dioxide leaves through the same holes.
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