Unlike most insects, ants live and work together in huge teams calledcolonies.
A colony can have hundreds or thousands of ants, and different ants in the colony have different jobs.
The ants that you see walking around outside are theworkers.
They collect food for the colony, dig the tunnels, and take care of baby ants.
There are lots and lots of them, and theyre all girlsin fact, theyre usually all sisters!
Some kinds of ants have a few especially large workers that aresoldiers, protecting the nest from other ants.
Deep inside the nest lives thequeen(or sometimes more than one).
Shes usually bigger than all the other ants, and her job is to have babies.
In fact, shes the mother of all the workers.
There arent many boy ants, calleddrones.
They usually have wings, so that they can fly away and help start new colonies.
The colony needs all the different jobs for work.
The queen cant collect food, so she needs the workers.
But the workers cant have babies, so they need the queen.
Some scientists say that a colony of ants acts like one single animal.
Find some ants outside and watch them.
Put a couple of crumbs of food down for them and see what they do.
They follow the trail to the food and help collect it too.
Thats like if you could pick up a car!
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