Student Research Pages - Awesome Ants
Photo by Steve Jurvetson; shared via Creative Commons
Yikes, what's that tickling your arm? An ant! Wait! Before you flick it away, take a closer look at one of the hardest working insects you'll ever meet.
Like all insects, ants have six legs and three body sections. Ants also have a hard covering, much like a shell. In fact, you could say that an ant wears its skeleton on the outside.
That's why it's called an "exoskeleton."
Ant's Body Parts
ANT-ATOMY (body parts)
- Head
- Mandibles – strong jaws that dig, cut, bite and carry objects
- Eyes – compound eyes that detect motion
- Antennae – elbowed feelers that smell, taste and touch and communicate with each other
- Thorax – six legs attached
- Abdomen –
ANT-ERESTING FACTS! (Interesting facts!)
Ants work together!
(Photo by Gabrielle Conley, ©2011)
- Ants can carry 10 to 50 times their own weight! Whoa...that’s like you carrying a car!
- Ants eat a lot of live or dead insects and nectar.
- Ants usually live in the soil, but some, like carpenter ants, also live in dead wood.
- Ants take care of larvae by washing them! (We call the ant babies right after they hatch and before they have legs "larvae.")
- Ants have lived on Earth for more than 100 million years!
- Ants create their own germ-fighters to keep the colony from getting infected.
- Ants can walk upside down because each foot has two hooked claws.
- Ants are very neat and clean. They have built-in combs for grooming their legs and antennae.
- Ants do not have lungs. Instead oxygen enters and carbon dioxide exits through tiny openings on the sides of the body.