Joey Saves The Day!: Facts about ants

Welcome to Ant Facts!

Let me tell you all about ants! Have you ever sat and just watched ants? I love to watch the ants carrying food and other stuff back to their colony. Ants live and work together as a team in their colony. Ants are very relaxed and fascinating insects. There are over 12,000 different species of ants that live all around the world.

What type of ants live in your state?

Facts about ants:

1. Here is a list of some of the different types of ants in alphabetical order:

Argentine ant
Black garden ant
Black house ant
Bullet ant
Carebara diversa ant
Carpenter ant
Electric ant
Longhorn crazy ant
Meat ant
Red harvester ant
Red wood ant
Southern fire ant
Tapinoma ant
Yellow meadow ant

2. The queen ant is the leader and founder of the colony. Her role is to lay as many eggs as possible to populate her colony. All the worker ants are females, and they are responsible for different tasks inside the colony. The worker ants are responsible for caring for the baby ants, getting food, and caring for the queen ants. Drone ants are males and die shortly after mating with the queen ants.

3. Ants are robust! Depending on the species, they can carry up to 20 times their body weight or more.

4. Did you know that ants have two stomachs? One is for their food needs, and the other is for feeding other ants, like the queen ant. The queen is like royalty, and she must be taken care of!

5. Some ants can live up to 30 years, depending on the type of ant. A Lasius niger queen ant has the longest recorded life span of any insect. She lived almost 29 years in captivity.

6. The Dinoponera is one of the largest ants in the world. They can grow one (1) to three (3) inches long. The Carebara munuta is one of the smallest ants in the world. They can grow to around 1 millimeter (mm) long. That is very tiny!

7. An ant colony has many rooms and passages. Some of the rooms are used for nurseries, the queen ant's quarters, food storage, and rooms for the worker ants.

8. Did you know that ants do not have ears? They are capable of hearing by being able to sense vibrations.

Share a fact about ants with us?

Get your free printable ant coloring sheet here:

Ant coloring sheet

Visit my printables section for a wide selection of worksheets and coloring sheets!

Books about ants:

1. Ants for Kids: by Beverly Gerdeman PhD

2. The Life and Times of the Ant by Charles Micucci

3. Anthill (Happy Fox Books) by Petra Bartikova

4. 1,001 Ants by Joanna Rzezak

Parents/caretakers, be sure books are child-friendly before reading them to your child/children.