A wood-ant city
An ant nest is like a little city where hundreds or even thousands of
ants live together. Ants make their nests by digging tunnels and
storerooms in the ground.
The picture on the page across from this one shows a wood-ant nest. If
you look at the picture carefully, you can see a lot going on. On the
ground above the nest a group of workers hunts for food. The ant with
wings is a male. Male ants don’t do any work.
Inside the nest, in the top tunnel, two workers are bringing in part of
a leaf. They will use it to repair the nest. Other workers are getting
ready to carry cocoons to another room. Inside each cocoon is a baby
ant. When the babies grow up they will break out of the cocoons and go
right to work.
In the next tunnel is the queen ant. She is much bigger than the
workers. She spends her whole life laying eggs. She is the mother of all
the ants in the nest.
Ants work together as if they were quite smart. But they aren’t really
smart. They can’t think about things as you can. An ant does things
because its body gets signals, such as smells. Different smells make
ants do different things.
Ants never change or learn anything new. They can’t. Hundreds of
millions of years ago ants were living the same way and doing the same
sort of things they do now.
