🐜 Ants up close

Ants live in big families called colonies. Every ant has its own job to help the whole group. Some search for food, some care for baby ants, and some protect the nest. They share what they find by touching antennae and passing along tiny smells. Together, they can move food or build tunnels far bigger than any single ant could manage alone.

An ant is a tiny black or brown bug with a body that looks like it has three little balls in a row.

When an ant finds food, it leaves a trail of invisible scent all the way back to its nest, like dropping tiny smelly breadcrumbs. Other ants follow that scent trail with their antennae, and every ant that walks the path adds a little more scent, making the trail stronger. That is why ants often end up walking in one neat line instead of wandering off in every direction.

Ants leave a scent trail for each other to follow, so the whole group can find food together.

An ant hill is the little mound of dirt or sand you see poking up from the ground, and it is really just the entrance to a huge underground home full of tunnels and rooms. Ants dig those tunnels bit by bit, carrying each tiny grain of soil up to the surface with their jaws. Underneath that small pile, the tunnels can stretch down surprisingly deep, much further than the mound above ever suggests.

An ant hill is a little pile of dirt with tiny tunnels underneath, where a whole family of ants lives.

Yes, ants live together in a big group, and every ant has a job to help the whole family.

An ant can lift and carry something many times heavier than its own body, far more than a person could ever lift compared to their own weight. Its strength comes from its small size and its hard outer shell, which gives strong little muscles plenty of leverage to push and pull. That is how you sometimes see one tiny ant hauling a crumb or a leaf that looks enormous next to it.