Bug card No. 1117 of 1,500

Red imported fire ant

Solenopsis invicta

The red imported fire ant is a reddish brown ant with a darker tail end. It came from South America and has spread to many countries.

Lives in

First from South America, now also in the United States, Australia, Asia and other places

Top speed

about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Dangerous: look, do not touch

What does it eat?

It eats almost anything: insects, seeds, dead animals and sweet honeydew from other bugs.

A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)

A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

Red imported fire ant about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

When floods come, the ants hold on to each other and build a living raft that floats.

One colony can have from half a million to two million ants.

The mound has no door on top. The ants come out through tunnels far away from the nest.

Workers live for a few months, but a queen can live for years.

The ants keep their nest tidy and carry dead ants and scraps out to a rubbish pile.

you asked

?How many ants live in a fire ant colony?

A big colony can have from 500,000 to 2,000,000 ants.

Red imported fire 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 Stephen Ausmus. Public domain, 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.