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Army Ants

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  Animal class: Insects (Have a segmented body (3 main body parts: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen), cold-blooded, an exoskeleton (an outer skeleton around the whole body to help protect them), jointed legs, six legs, antennas, wings (some insect will have 1-2 pairs of wings or no wings at all), most babies come from eggs, but some are live births, and their sizes range from the Dicopomorpha echmepterygis (a type of wasp, also called a Fariyfly) at 0.005 in ( .139 mm) to the Phoebaeti cus chani (a type of Stick insect) at 2 ft (62.4 cm) long. (Examples: Beatles, butt erfl ies, Praying manti s, and ladybugs) There are around 925 thousand different species)
• Diet: Carnivores (They only eat meat) – other ants and insects, and on some smaller animals like frogs, snakes, and lizards
• Lifespan: The queen can live up to 20 years, worker ants about one year
• Predators: Birds, beetles, and wasps
• Size: Worker ants (0.25 in or 0.635 cm), Soldier ants (0.5 in or 1.27 cm), Drone ants (0.60 in or 1.5 cm), Queen is the largest (2 in or 5 cm)
• Species: There are over 200 ant species
• Status: Not Endangered
• Weight: About 0.00004 -0.0002 oz (1- 5 mg)
• Where do they live? : They can be found in the U.S., South America, Africa, and Asia
• They make a temporary nest out of their bodies called “bivouacs” and can hold 200,000 ants or more. These nests can be found inside or hanging from trees or large structures it can hang from. Inside the nest are the queen and the larvae (baby ants & eggs). The ants move their nest about every 25 days to make room for new ants.
• About every three years, the colony will split into two groups. They do this because the colony gets too big.
• These ants are not generally dangerous but will bite and sting.
• Army ants work collecti vely to build bridges out of their bodies, and they can be many feet (meters) long. This body bridge helps them get from one place to another when there is an open space in between.
• Once in a while, a smaller group of army ants will separate from the leading group of ants, and when this happens, they will start to follow each other in a circle. When the ants start to do this, it’s called a “death spiral” because they will never stop following one another and die from exhaustion (from being too tired).