We have all seen the tiny insect called ants. Did you know, scientists have discovered and named over 15,000 different species and subspecies? That would be like you having 15,000 cousins all with different colored hair, different colored eyes and all of you are different sizes. Ants have been given some pretty strange names that usually describe what they do, where they live or how they look. Some of those include the leaf cutter ants who cut leaves and carry back to their home, or the yellow crazy ant that got their name from their color and how they act. Other ants found around the world are red ants, wood ants but the most notorious, is the fire ant.
Fire ants get their name from their painful sting. They have a venom called solenopsin and when you get bit by one of these tiny wonders of nature that venom causes your skin to burn and it can cause blisters that will last for days. On the bright side, scientists have found that the venom can be used for medical purposes like fighting cancer. Isn’t it crazy that there are ants used for medical reasons?
Fire ants live in colonies with up to 250,000 ants. That is like a human living in a pretty big city like Buffalo New York, or Baton Rouge Lousianna. A colony has a lot of tunnels that lead to different chambers or rooms. The queen lives in one chamber where she lays her eggs. Those eggs get moved to their own chamber called a nursery. Other rooms are used to store food and some are there for the workers to rest in. Workers are constantly moving dirt to make new tunnels and chambers as the colony grows. Just like humans build new roads and buildings as a town gets bigger.
Fire ants originated in Central and South America, but they sailed to North America on ships as hitchhikers or stowaways in the 1930s. Like humans, fire ants are omnivores. That means they are not picky. They like to eat plants and even small animals. That makes them great for eating bad insects that are harmful to the environment, but they also eat farmer’s crops and small animals like baby birds.
Fire ants are invasive in the U.S., but like most invasive species, it is impossible to get rid of them. It is believed if you put all the fire ants in the world together, they would weigh more than 13 million tons. To understand that better, Yale University sccientists say that if all of the elephant, bear, bison, gazelle, and other land mammals on earth were put together – all of them – they would weigh 22 million tons. It's a good thing that ants don’t have bigger brains. If they did, they could take over the world.
