Interesting Ants

At Surf City Pest Control, our Huntington Beach pest control company has been providing expert pest prevention and removal services for over 45 years. Much of our great success is due to educating our customers and our readers about what we do and the pests that they encounter. Today’s subject: ants.

Ants are common almost everywhere, check out some of our interesting ant facts below:

1. Colonies are bigger than the average ant farm. While there are a few species that live in colonies of only 30 or so ants, the average ant colony contains thousands of individuals. There are even super colonies that contain more than 300 million. These colonies have been identified in Japan, Australia, the United States, and southern Europe.
2. Each ant has a specific job. Ants are very social insects and they divide up the jobs in each colony. The queen: her only job is to lay eggs. All other female ants are workers who feed the larvae, remove waste, forge for supplies, and defend the nest. Male ants only mate with the queen.
3. Ants do not have ears. Ants use special sensory preceptors on their feet and knees to feel vibrations in the ground. They also use their antennae and cilia (hairs) on their bodies to feel around their surroundings.
4. One species of ant is exclusively female. In Central and South America, researchers have yet to find a male in the ant species M. smithii. The queen ant apparently reproduces asexually so all of the offspring are clones of the queen.
5. Some ants can become zombies. There is a species of fungus that infects ants. Through certain means the fungus finds it way under the ant’s exoskeleton and controls the body, eventually killing the ant. Some ant species have learned to recognize infected colony mate and will take them away to protect the rest of the colony.
6. Ants can lift 10-50 times their body weight. Because ants are so small, they need larger muscles than their body mass to carry objects much heavier and larger than themselves. If humans could lift 10 times their weight, a 200-pound man could lift a VW Beetle over his head.
7. Some ants do not live in colonies. Army ants live in groups of 200 or so and have two phases of their lives: nomad and stationary. The ants travel each day and only stop with the queen lays eggs and the colony waits for them to hatch. During this time the worker ants make a nest out of their bodies to protect the queen, the food, and the eggs.
8. Ants are found almost everywhere on Earth. Ants are found on every continent on Earth except Antarctica. The vast distribution of ants is rivaled only by humans.

Ants have some fascinating characteristics, but ant control and management around the home are important for health and safety reasons. Click here or call Surf City Pest Control today at (714) 655-1947 to find out more about Newport Beach pest control.