Argentine ant
The Argentine ant is a tiny brown ant, only about two and a half millimetres long. It came from South America but has travelled all around the world with people. Its nests have many queens, and in some places they join into giant ant cities.
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Fun facts
In many countries, its nests do not fight each other and join into one huge supercolony.
One supercolony in California stretches for hundreds of kilometres and may have a trillion ants.
Scientists think the supercolonies on different continents are really one giant family, spread by people travelling.
If water floods its nest, the workers carry all the babies to dry ground and the whole colony moves.
It nests almost anywhere: in the ground, under stones, in cracks in walls and even among things inside houses.
Most asked questions about Argentine ant
?How big is an Argentine ant?
Very small, only about 2.2 to 2.6 millimetres long.
?Why is the Argentine ant so successful?
Its nests share and do not fight each other, so they can grow into enormous supercolonies.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Linepithema humile
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- South America, North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Argentine ant (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Penarc. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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