European Amazon ant
The European Amazon ant is a small red ant with a very strange life. It cannot feed itself or look after its own babies. Instead, it raids the nests of other ants, carries their babies home and lets them grow up as its helpers.
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Fun facts
The only job the Amazon ants do is raiding. All other work is done by the helper ants.
In its nest, there are at least five helper ants for every Amazon ant.
A new queen sneaks into another ant nest, takes the place of the old queen and makes the workers accept her.
She gives off a special smell that calms the other ants down so they stop attacking.
In the west of Europe these ants are dark red, and in the east they are more orange-red.
Most asked questions about European Amazon ant
?What does the European Amazon ant eat?
It cannot feed itself. Its helper ants, taken from other nests as babies, feed it and look after the nest.
?How big is the European Amazon ant?
It is small, about 5 to 7 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Polyergus rufescens
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Slave-making ant
Where the facts come from
- Polyergus rufescens (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 April Nobile. CC BY 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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