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and males have wings, those wings stick out of the top of their
thoraxes.
Abdomen and petiole: one lump or two?
The abdomen is where all the action happens; this ant segment
holds all the big-time organs. Almost all of an ant’s digestive
system is packed into its booty, as well as tons of chemicalemitting
glands, stingers and trail markers, the entire reproductive
system, and most of its fat storage. Many ant species have a
special stomach in their abdomens that does not digest food.
Instead, they use this stomach as a backpack to carry food back
to the nest where they share it with their sisters by spitting it into
their mouths.
The first part of an ant abdomen is called the petiole. The petiole
is that really skinny section between the thorax and an ant’s big
fat bottom, which we often call a gaster. The petiole gives ants
that Hollywood wasp waist and helps them to be flexible when
they move around. A lot of people interested in identifying ants
check that petiole first to see if it has one bump like some ant
species have or two bumps like other species have.
Where’s the nose?
Unlike us, ants don’t have noses. Instead, they smell and breathe
with different body parts. To smell, they mostly use their
antennae. To breathe, they have little holes all along their bodies
called spiracles, which they can open and close. When they
open, air rushes into beautiful silvery tubes that lace their insides
and bathe their organs with the air they need to survive.
The Ant Life Cycle
Like butterflies, beetles, and flies, ants grow up in four stages: a
tiny egg, a worm-like larva, a pupa, and the adult stage that most
of us recognize as ants.
Eggs
For most species, only the queen lays eggs that become workers.
Most of the time, eggs are creamy-colored orbs smaller than the
period at the end of this sentence. When queens fertilize the
eggs, females hatch. When they don’t, males hatch.
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