1. Fun Fact: If you are an ant, you have a social stomach and a private stomach. Your private stomach is for you to use, but your social stomach is one you share! All your sisters and the queen share what they ate with you and you so the same. That is right, they regurgitate what they ate and offer it to you, and you do the same! That is taking "sharing and caring" to a completely new level! 

 

2.  Fun Fact: Ants are the quintessential team player. It's all about what is best for the colony, not about promoting oneself. People can learn a lot from the ants. 

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3.  Fun Fact: If you are an ant, you use math to count your steps! You count how many steps you have taken from home in search of food and then on your return journey you know how far you have to travel back! 

 

4.  Fun Fact: If you are an ant, you use celestial objects and shadows to navigate. Once you leave your home, you turn in a circle clocking the sun and then use it as a reference point on your journey away from home. On your return trip you know that the sun and shadows have to be on the opposite side in order to get back home!

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5. Fun Fact: Some of the largest mega colonies of ants are in Europe, Japan and California. There is an Argentine ant colony in Europe that covers about 3,700 mile. The colony in Japan is estimated to have over 306 million workers and the colony in California covers over 560 miles!

 

6. Fun Fact: There are anywhere from 12,000 to 22,000 different species of ants!

 

7. Fun Fact: The Sahara Silver Desert Ant can survive temperatures of 127 F that can kill all other animals!   

 

8.  Fun Fact: The Turtle ant soldier uses its enlarged flat head as a doorstop! They live in wood and use their heads to block the entrance so predators cannot enter into the nest! 

9. Fun Fact: There is more biomass of ants than there is human biomass on earth.

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10.  Fun Fact: Some ants use chemicals for protection and defense while other ants use chemicals to subdue aphids while herding them. 

 

11.  Fun Fact: If you are an Asian weaver ant, you can carry 100 times your weight! 

 

12.  Fun Fact: If you are a Silver Desert Ant from the Sahara, you can run 100 times your body length in one second! 

 

13.  Fun Fact: The oldest ants date back 120 million years to the cretaceous era. They walked with the dinosaurs! 

 

14. Fun Fact: Some ants collect sap from trees and use it as medicine to fight parasites. They use medicine just like doctors do! 

 

15. Fun Fact: Army ants are the most aggressive and deadly ants. They are nomadic and relocate during the night. They keep the queen and brood safe inside the mass of ants. They hunt for prey on their daily raids and consume anything that stands in their way. 

 

16.  Fun Fact: If you are a Leaf Cutter ant you are one of the oldest known farmers on earth. The Leaf Cutters have been farming fungus for about 50 million years. The ants and fungus have co-evolved and are now dependent on each other for their survival. When new queens leave their colony during their nuptial flight, they take a small piece of fungus with them to start a farm to feed the new colony. 

 

17.  Fun Fact: Ants are found on all continents with the exception of ANTarctica. Shouldn't they call it Anti-arctica. 

 

18. Fun Fact: Ants have one of the most complex chemical language of any animal and they use their antennae to spell the message. 

19. Fun Fact: If you are a Zombie Ant you are in trouble! These ants become infected by a type of fungus that causes them to climb a tree, bite down and die. The fungus then grows out of their bodies and spreads their spores into the wind. It's like something out of a sci-fi movie. 

 

20. Fun Fact: If you are a queen, your sleep includes a REM cycle, but if you are a worker then you take hundreds of power naps per day each lasting about one minute. The outcome is said to be related to why the queens live for up to 3 decades while the workers only live a matter of months.  

 

21. Fun Fact: Ants will raid other colonies, steal their young, and turn them into slaves to serve their colony. 

 

22.  Fun Fact: There are approximately 10 quadrillion ants on the planet. That is 10,000,000,000,000,000 ants! 

 

23. Fun Fact: Ants are considered by many scholars to be a "superorganism" and collectively have a "hive mind." In other words, they "group think."

 

24. Fun Fact: A parasitic queen ant is a newly mated female alate that infiltrates an existing colony of another species, then kills their queen, and enslaves all the workers to serve her. Over time the enslaved workers die and are replaced by the parasitic queens own workers.

 

25. Fun Fact: Some ants herd aphids and caterpillars and milk them for their honeydew. They milk them like cows!

 

26. Fun Fact: Army ants mandibles are so strong that some of Africa's indigenous tribes have used them as sutures. They hold the ant between their fingers and have it bite the desired area then they pinch off the body leaving the ants head as a suture.