Ant

The ant is a small insect that lives in large groups called colonies. Ants are found on almost every piece of land on Earth. The only places without them are Antarctica, Iceland, Greenland, and a few remote islands. Scientists have named more than 14,000 kinds of ants, and they think thousands more are still waiting to be discovered.

Like all insects, an ant has six legs and a body with three parts: a head, a middle section called the thorax, and a back section called the abdomen. Most ants are between one and ten millimeters long. That is smaller than a pea. Ants have two bent antennae on their heads. They use these antennae to smell, taste, and touch the world around them.

An ant colony works as a team. Each colony has one or more queens, a small number of male ants, and thousands of female worker ants. The queen's only job is to lay eggs. She can live for 20 or 30 years, which is amazing for an insect. The workers do everything else. They dig tunnels, find food, feed the young, and defend the nest. Some colonies have millions of ants, all acting like parts of one giant animal.

Ants talk to each other mostly through smell. When a worker finds food, she walks home leaving a trail of a chemical called a pheromone. Other ants follow the scent to the food and lay down more pheromone on the way back. That is why you often see ants marching in a neat line straight to a crumb on the kitchen floor.

Different ants eat different things. Some hunt other insects. Some drink sweet plant juices. Leafcutter ants in Central and South America snip pieces of leaves and carry them underground. They do not eat the leaves. Instead, they use them to grow a special fungus, and the fungus is their food. Leafcutter ants were farmers millions of years before humans were.

Ants are tiny, but together they move the world. They dig more soil than earthworms in many places, which helps plants grow. They spread seeds, clean up dead animals, and feed birds, lizards, and anteaters. Ants have been on Earth for more than 100 million years, which means they walked among the dinosaurs.

Not all ants are friendly to people. Fire ants sting, and army ants can march through a forest in swarms of millions. But most ants ignore humans completely. They are busy running their own quiet kingdoms under our feet.