• Adult ants cannot chew and swallow solid food. Instead they swallow the juice which they squeeze from pieces of food. They throw away the dry part that is left over.
• Ants are clean and tidy insects. Some worker ants are given the job of taking the rubbish from the nest and putting it outside in a special rubbish dump!
• Ants can lift an object up to fifty times their body-weight and carry it over their heads. They don’t do this with their feet, but with their mouths.
• Ants don’t sleep.
• Ants have six legs. Each leg has three joints. The legs of the ant are very strong so they can run very quickly. If a man could run as fast for his size as an ant can, he could run as fast as a racehorse.
• Ants use their antena not only for touch, but also for their sense of smell.
• Each ant colony has at least one or more queens.
• Each colony of ants has its own smell.In this way, intruders can be recognized immediately.
• For every human in the world there are one million ants.
• If a worker ant has found a good source for food, it leaves a trail of scent so that the other ants in the colony can find the food.
• Many ants such as the common Red species have a sting which they use to defend their nest.
• The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants.
• The ant has two eyes, each eye is made of many smaller eyes. They are called compound eyes.
• The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days.
• The brain of an ant has about 250,000 brain cells.
• The head of the ant has a pair of large, strong jaws. The jaws open and shut sideways like a pair of scissors.
• The job of the queen is to lay eggs which the worker ants look after.
• The sense of smell of an ant is just as good as a dog’s is.
• The study of ants is called Myrmecology.
• When the only queen ant dies, so does the entire colony, because no new workers are born.
• Worker ants are sterile, they look for food, look after the young, and defend the nest from unwanted visitors.

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