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the female ant lays both fertilized eggs and unfertilized eggs

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the female ant lays both fertilized eggs and unfertilized eggs

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The circulatory system of ants and other insects is similar to that of a human. The work of blood in insects is different from the human body. Like in humans, blood flows only in the veins and arteries, but in insects' bodies, the fluid is free to move in any direction

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The circulatory system of ants and other insects is similar to that of a human. The work of blood in insects is different from the human body. Like in humans, blood flows only in the veins and arteries, but in insects' bodies, the fluid is free to move in any direction

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The digestive tract of ants is characterized by a developed crop, an elaborate proventriculus, and an infrabuccal pocket, which is a special filtrating structure in the mouthparts, adapting to their special trophallaxis behavior.

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The digestive tract of ants is characterized by a developed crop, an elaborate proventriculus, and an infrabuccal pocket, which is a special filtrating structure in the mouthparts, adapting to their special trophallaxis behavior.

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Ants don't have bones, but they do have a hard, fingernail-like covering called an exoskeleton to protect their bodies. Six legs take the ant where it wants to go. Ants don't have ears, but they can hear by sensing vibrations with their knees.

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Ants don't have bones, but they do have a hard, fingernail-like covering called an exoskeleton to protect their bodies. Six legs take the ant where it wants to go. Ants don't have ears, but they can hear by sensing vibrations with their knees.

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The nervous system of ants consists of a long nerve cord that also runs from head to rear with branches leading to the parts of the body, kind of like a human spinal cord

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The nervous system of ants consists of a long nerve cord that also runs from head to rear with branches leading to the parts of the body, kind of like a human spinal cord

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females are diploid and develop from fertilized eggs (sexually) and males are haploid and develop from unfertilized eggs (arrhenotokous parthenogenesis)

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females are diploid and develop from fertilized eggs (sexually) and males are haploid and develop from unfertilized eggs (arrhenotokous parthenogenesis)

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the mesosoma, is packed full with muscles that power its three pairs of legs

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the mesosoma, is packed full with muscles that power its three pairs of legs

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Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the Cretaceous period, about 99 million years ago

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Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the Cretaceous period, about 99 million years ago

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The Strange Way Indian Jumping Ants Reproduce | ScienceTake | The New York Times

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The Life Cycle Of An Ant - Ant Life Cycle Lesson For Kids

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Curious Kids is a series for children. Send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au. You might also like the podcast Imagine This, a co-production between ABC KIDS listen and The Conversation, based on Curious Kids.

Do ants have blood? - Sita, age 4, Murwillumbah

Great question, Sita! The short answer is ants have something similar to blood, but scientists call it "haemolymph". It is yellowish or greenish.

In vertebrates (animals with backbones such as humans, cats, dogs, snakes, birds and frogs) blood's main job is to move important things around the body. It moves stuff like nutrients from our food, wastes, and oxygen from the air to where it needs to go to make your body work properly. Your blood is red because it contains lots of tiny, tiny packages called "red blood cells", which carry oxygen around your body.

Ants and other insects also have a liquid inside their body that moves nutrients around. Although this fluid does some of the same jobs as blood, it is more correctly called haemolymph.

Read more: Curious Kids: how do ants make their own medicine?

An important difference between blood and haemolymph is that haemolymph does not move oxygen around the insects' body.

The reason insect blood is usually yellowish or greenish (not red) is that insects do not have red blood cells. Unlike blood, haemolymph does not flow through blood vessels like veins, arteries and capillaries. Instead it fills the insect's main body cavity and is pushed around by its heart.

Breathe in, breathe out

You might be wondering how insects move oxygen around their bodies without the help of red blood cells. The answer is that insects get oxygen to their organs in a very different way than humans do.

In humans, oxygen gets in to our bodies through our mouth or nose and then goes to the lungs. The lungs pass oxygen on to red blood cells, which carry oxygen around the body.

Insects, on the other hand, breathe through little holes on the side of their bodies called "spiracles". Each spiracle leads to air tubes called trachea which branch through the entire body. The air tubes bring oxygen directly to the insect's organs without needing the help of red blood cells.

The insect's breathing system doesn't work very well in larger animals because oxygen cannot travel far enough down the tubes to reach the organs. That's why insects are usually small.

About 250 million years ago when there was much more oxygen in the air, some insects did grow to amazing sizes. One type of dragonfly, for example, had wings that stretched almost a metre in length. That's about the distance an average adult covers in a single step!

Some insects use their haemolymph in unusual ways. When threatened by a predator, blister beetles can squirt haemolymph from their knees! This might seem like a silly way to defend yourself, but it is very effective because the haemolymph contains poisonous chemicals that can hurt or kill predators.

Blood and haemolymph are both amazing liquids that keep different types of animals alive.

Read more: Curious Kids: is it true dogs don't like to travel?
Hello, curious kids! Have you got a question you'd like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au Please tell us your name, age and which city you live in. We won't be able to answer every question but we will do our best.

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Ants have something similar to blood, but it's called haemolymph. Some insects use it in unusual ways. When threatened by a predator, blister beetles can squirt haemolymph from their knees.

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Ants are among the insects most familiar to us. In this video, we see in detail what an ants body is like and how its structure helps the ant obtain food and carry on other life activities. The life cycle of an ant and its life in a colony are shown.

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Imagine being the size of an ant. Be careful - a face-to-face encounter with an ant would be scary and potentially life-threatening! But, if you avoided being eaten, you could learn a lot about ant anatomy from a close-up view. Ants have many body parts that are normally hard to see without a magnifying glass or microscope. And each structure has its own special function.

When you come across an ant on the ground, it's almost always a worker ant. Workers are adult females that don't reproduce but perform all the other jobs needed to keep an ant colony alive and healthy. In case you are wondering, there are no male workers in ant colonies. What do these female worker ants look like? Let's take a closer look.

Anatomy of a Worker Ant

All ants may look the same to you, but if you look closely at workers from different ant species, you may see some differences. We have pointed a few of them out using an asterisk ( * ) symbol. Think you know all these parts? Try our ant anatomy activity.

What's Inside an Ant?

Now that you can see how ants are put together and what each part is named, let's learn what each part does and what is inside of them.

The ant's second body segment, the mesosoma, is packed full with muscles that power its three pairs of legs. The legs are designed for running - ants can run very fast for their size. At the end of each leg is a hooked claw that is used to climb and hang on to things.

The gaster contains the ant's heart, digestive system, and chemical weaponry. Some ants have a sting, which is used to inject venom into enemies. Others have a tiny opening at the tip of their gaster through which they spray acid to stun prey or defend themselves.

In between the mesosoma and the gaster is the petiole (and in some ants, the post-petiole). This is one body part that distinguishes ants from other insects. The petiole (and post-petiole, when present) provides a flexible junction, allowing the ant to bend its gaster forward to sting or spray.

Finally, the entire body of an ant is covered by a hard exoskeleton that provides support, protection, and a barrier against water loss.

How Ants Find Their Way

You may have noticed we didn't talk about ant heads. Like you and me, ants use their heads to sense information about the world around them. This is very important for their survival and the life of the colony. If you watch an ant's head, the antennae are always moving back and forth, touching, tasting, and smelling everything within reach. Each antenna is bent in the middle like the elbow of a human arm - this is another unique feature of ants.

Their compound eyes, like the eyes of most insects, can contain hundreds of lenses that combine to form a single image in the ant's brain. Ants that use vision to hunt for prey have big compound eyes. Other ants that live in dark places have reduced eyes and may even be blind. Some ants also have three simple eyes called ocelli that detect light.

The mandibles are an ant's most important tool. Ants don't have grasping forelegs, so they use their mandibles like human hands to hold and carry things. Mandibles can also be used for biting, crushing, cutting, digging, fighting, and hunting. Hidden by the mandibles is the mouth, which ants use not only to eat, but also to clean themselves and nestmates.

Ant heads, especially the eyes and mandibles, come in all shapes and sizes and provide clues to the kinds of food ants eat and the different lifestyles they live.

Minor and Major Workers

Worker ants perform all sorts of jobs for their colony. In most species, all workers are roughly the same size. However, some ants have different sizes of workers that serve different roles. Minor workers are smaller and perform general labor such as taking care of the young, building and cleaning the nest, and gathering food. Major workers are larger and specialized to perform certain tasks. For example, major workers called soldiers have large heads and powerful mandibles used to guard and defend the colony.

Anatomy of a Queen Ant

Queen ants spend most of their lives inside the nest laying eggs, but you may see one outside during the mating season. Queens have most of the same body parts as workers. However, queens are usually much bigger than workers. The queen's large gaster contains her reproductive system. Queens also start out with wings, but these are torn off after mating. More muscles are required in the mesosoma to power flight.

Anatomy of a Male Ant

The only time you'll encounter a male ant is during mating, because they die shortly afterward. Like queens, males have wings and muscular mesosomas for flying. But males are typically not as large as queens and have smaller heads with bigger eyes and straighter antennae.

Common Misconceptions About Ants

Head, thorax, and abdomen?... Like other insects, ants do have a head, thorax, and abdomen, but the thorax and abdomen are not obvious... The ant's mesosoma includes the thorax plus the front of the abdomen - they are fused together. The rest of the abdomen is divided into the petiole, post-petiole (when present), and gaster.

Ouch! An ant bit me! ... People are usually mistaken when they think it's the bite of ant that hurts. Most of the ants we encounter are too small to inflict pain with their bites. However, even some of the tiniest ants can inject venom through their stings, causing burning, itching, and/or swelling. It's the sting, not the bite, that earns them names like "fire ant" and "bullet ant."

Ant Life Cycles

Ants, like all living things, have an individual life cycle. However, because ants are social - they live in family groups that cooperate to build nests, find food, and raise offspring - they also have a colony life cycle. Ant colonies range in size from just a few individuals to millions!

The social lifestyle of ants is a major reason for their success.

How Much Can an Ant Carry and How Many Ants Are Living on Earth?

These are just few questions that we have answered in our ant facts section that you can read.

Ant Views

See for yourself from your own computer. Enter our ant gallery and try out our virtual microscope to see ants like you have never seen them before.

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Imagine being the size of an ant. Be careful - a face-to-face encounter with an ant would be scary and potentially life-threatening! But, if you avoided being eaten, you could learn a lot about ant anatomy from a close-up view. Ants have many body parts that are normally hard to see without a magnifying glass or microscope.

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How Do Ants Find Food? | Animal Science for Kids

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Scale Factors: The Incredible Strength of Ants | Twig Secondary

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Queen Ant Mating Season | Ant Attack | BBC Earth

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Muscular System 101 - The Human Muscular System and Types of Muscles - FreeSchool 101

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Reproductive System, Part 1 - Female Reproductive System: Crash Course Anatomy & Physiology #40

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An insect's nervous system is a network of specialized cells (called neurons) that serve as an "information highway" within the body. These cells generate electrical impulses (action potientials) that travel as waves of depolarization along the cell's membrane. Every neuron has a nerve cell body (where the nucleus is found) and filament-like processes ( dendrites, axons, or collaterals) that propagate the action potential. Signal transmission is always unidirectional - moving toward the nerve cell body along a dendrite or a collateral and away from the nerve cell body along an axon.

Neurons are usually divided into three categories, depending on their function within the nervous system:

1. Afferent (sensory) neurons - these bipolar or multipolar cells have dendrites that are associated with sense organs or receptors. They always carry information toward the central nervous system.

2. Efferent (motor) neurons - unipolar cells that conduct signals away from the central nervous system and stimulate responses in muscles and glands.

3. Internuncial (association) neurons - unipolar cells (often with several collaterals and/or branching axons) that conduct signals within the central nervous system.

Individual nerve cells connect with one another through special junctions, called synapses. When a nerve impulse reaches the synapse, it releases a chemical messenger ( neurotransmitter substance) that diffuses across the synapse and triggers a new impulse in the dendrite(s) of one or more connecting neurons. Acetylcholine, 5-hydroxytryptamine, dopamine, and noradrenaline are examples of neurotransmitters found in both vertebrate and invertebrate nervous systems.

Nerve cells are typically found grouped in bundles. A nerve is simply a bundle of dendrites or axons that serve the same part of the body. A ganglion is a dense cluster of interconnected neurons that process sensory information or control motor outputs.

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An insect's nervous system is a network of specialized cells (called neurons) that serve as an "information highway" within the body. These cells generate electrical impulses (action potientials) that travel as waves of depolarization along the cell's membrane.

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The Ants nervous system The ant has a segmented nervous system like all other arthropods. The ant has a brain and central nervous system with a total of 250,000 neurons, for perspective, a humans nervous system contains over 85,000,000,000 neurons. The Ant has a ventral nerve chord with ganglions in the center of each segment, branching nerves out to those different parts of the body. Along with ganglions along the ventral chord, the ant also has a nerve ring near the pharynx in the oral cavity.

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The Ants nervous system The ant has a segmented nervous system like all other arthropods. The ant has a brain and central nervous system with a total of 250,000 neurons, for perspective,...

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Ants don't use lungs to breath . Like most insects, they take in oxygen through openings in their abdomens called 'spiracles' which allows sufficient oxygen to maintain their activity. The spiracles are connected through a network of tubes which help distribute the oxygen to almost every cell in their body.

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An ant's exoskeleton is called the "integument." An ant's integument is highly specialized depending upon the species. However, regardless of the species, it doesn't just protect the ant, but also contains organs to help eliminate waste.