All About Ants Activity

Ant anatomy

Explore the image below to find out about the different parts of an ant.

https://view.genial.ly/6091558c0514260d208a264c

Ants will pretty much eat anything, making them omnivores. They will eat vegetation but they also eat other small insects. Ants live in colonies which are large groups of sometimes thousands or millions of ants that build an underground community. The ants living in the colony will have different roles, and some have it easier than others.

Roles in the ant colony

The Queen: The role of the queen is to lay the eggs and she is generally bigger than all the other ants. Colonies are started when a winged female egg hatches in a colony. This hatched female will leave the colony where she was born to mate with a drone. She then sets up her own new colony and sheds her wings becoming the queen. If she is well looked after the queen can live up to 30 years!

Worker ants: The role of the worker ants is a busy one. They must provide food for everyone in the colony. They go out into the world searching for food (sometimes in our homes) and they eat and store food in a second stomach which they then regurgitate in liquid form for the queen, larvae and other worker ants. All worker ants are female.

Drones: These are winged male ants. Their only purpose in life is to reproduce and serve have no other role in the colony. They die shortly after mating.