Family Science

About Ants

Did you know that there are about ten-million-billion ants in the world? There surely are plenty of these insects crawling around the planet!

Have you ever been on a picnic where ants have been a bother? Ants really like to eat fruit, crumbs, sweet things, and all sorts of food bits. Once an ant has found something good to eat they waste no time spreading the news to the other ants that share the ant hill.

Ants have an amazing way of “talking” to each other without making a single sound. When one of the ants finds food that it likes, the ant leaves a scent trail as it travels from the food to the ant nest. The scent (or smell) comes from the ants bottom, or rear end so that other ants can follow the trail back to the food!

Did you know that you have the power to stop the ants marching towards the food source? You can and it is very easy to do! When you discover the parade of insects try rubbing your finger across the invisible trail.

What happened? You rubbed away the scent. Now the ants cannot find and follow the trail!

Ants can be found in many places beyond the picnic table. You may find them on your porch, in the garden, at the park, and even in your kitchen! We certainly do not want to have ants marching across the kitchen floor, table, and counter!

Usually parents and other responsible adults know what to do about an ant problem in the home. Often they need to use something dangerous like poison to stop ants from invading the home. It is always best to let adults take care of indoor ant problems.

Outdoors, ants prefer to live near trees and in areas where they can work together building ant nests and farms below the grass or garden. Mostly all ants are females (girls) who share their work. They remain very busy searching for and collecting food to keep in their nest.

During the winter these ants will hibernate or sleep while it is cold. Ants need to work hard to collect food to store for when the days become warmer and they become active again.