Meat ant
The meat ant is one of the best-known ants in Australia. It has a shiny dark blue body and a red head, and it shimmers green or purple in the sun. It builds big round nest mounds covered with little stones and is very busy on warm days.
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Fun facts
One colony can have more than 300,000 ants.
It keeps the ground around its nest clear of plants and covers the mound with gravel and pebbles.
A big colony builds extra nests nearby, joined by clear ant paths.
Neighbouring colonies settle their borders with show fights instead of real wars.
Meat ants can clean a dead animal down to its bones in just a few weeks, which is why they are called meat ants.
Most asked questions about Meat ant
?Why is it called the meat ant?
Because it eats the remains of dead animals and can strip them down to the bones.
?How big is a meat ant?
About 6 to 12 millimetres long. The queen is the biggest.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Iridomyrmex purpureus
- Named by
- Smith, 1858
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Gravel ant, Southern meat ant
Where the facts come from
- Meat 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 AntWeb.org. 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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