Ant Facts

Ants are among the most successful animals on Earth. There are roughly 20,000 known species, and their combined biomass is estimated to rival — or exceed — that of all wild land mammals combined. They have been engineering complex societies for over 140 million years, predating most flowering plants, and their colonies function less like groups of individuals and more like a single distributed superorganism, with workers, soldiers, and reproductive castes operating in precise coordination without any central command.

The engineering feats ants accomplish are remarkable at any scale. Leafcutter ant colonies excavate underground networks that can extend 8 metres deep and span 600 square metres, complete with ventilation shafts, waste-disposal chambers, and fungus gardens — the ants farm a specific fungus, which they have cultivated for 50 million years, making them some of the earliest agricultural practitioners on the planet. Army ants build living bridges and rafts from their own interlocked bodies, dynamically adjusting the structure based on traffic load in real time.

Ant communication relies primarily on pheromones — chemical signals that can convey trail routes, alarm states, colony identity, and even rank. A single pheromone trail can recruit hundreds of workers within minutes. Some ant species have also developed remarkably sophisticated social behaviours: enslaving other species' workers, forming symbiotic relationships with aphids (farming them for honeydew in exchange for protection), and even engaging in what researchers describe as basic teaching — an experienced ant will slow its pace to guide a novice to a food source.