Created by ThinkQuest Team C004404

Do you know?

1. Ants are 'super weightlifters', some ants can carry objects that are ten times their body weight. Others can carry larger loads up to fifty times their weight. And many can haul these objects long distances and even climb trees with them! If humans could match this amazing strength, a 100-pound person would be able to pick up a small car, carry it seven or eight miles on his back, and then climb up the tallest mountain in the world still carrying the car!
2. Ants have changed very little in shape and size over the past 60 million years. Paleontologists, people who study the remains of ancient forms of life, have discovered more ant fossils than any other insect!
3. Ants come in a variety of sizes. The largest ants are more than one inch long. The smallest ants are no bigger than the period at the end of this sentence
4. Not all ants are black or red. Many are brown, and a few kinds of ants are yellow, blue, green or purple.
5. Ants are among the longest living insects in the world. Although most types of worker ants live from several months to a few years, the queen ant can survive up to 20 years! Compare these life spans with those of a common housefly (about 2 months), a rabbit (about 10 years), and a dog (usually 2-15 years).
6. Almost all of the ants in the world are worker ants and they are all females. Females do all the work in the nest, searching for food, nursing the young, constructing the nest, caring for the queen, feeding the other ants, keeping the nest clean, and fighting ants from other colonies. The queen ant, also a female, has only one job to do: lay eggs.
7. Males are only produced when new queens are looking for mates. After mating with the new qaeens, the male ants die.
8. All ant colonies have at least one queen. The number of eggs she lays depends on the type of ant she is, but the yearly numbers can range from a few hundred to many millions. The African driver ant queen can lay eggs at a rate of 3 to 4 million a month!
9. Some ants are ferocious hunters. The driver ants of Africa and the army ants from South America cling tightly to one another (in large groups of 10,000 to 500,000) as they travel across the land looking for food and attacking any animals who get in their path. These vicious creatures have been known to kill tarantulas, lizards, birds, snakes, pigs and sometimes animals as large as horses. Usually larger animals can get away from the oncoming ant army, unless they are caught off guard or sleeping.
10. Ants are social animals meaning they work together and help everyone in the colony. In order for the colony to run smoothly, different ants have different jobs. Some ants are farmers, gardeners, engineers, construction workers, tunnel diggers, babysitters, and soldiers.