Southern Michelin ant
Amblyopone australis
The southern Michelin ant is a hunting ant from Australia. It can be yellow, dark brown or almost black. It lives in small groups hidden under logs and stones.
Lives in
Australia, and now also New Zealand, under logs and stones
Length
4.5 to 8 mm (0.18 to 0.31 in)
workers, the queens are biggerWhat does it eat?
It hunts other small creatures with many legs, such as insects. The grown-up ants bring pieces of their catch home to feed the babies.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail🍽️could run across a dinner table in 9.5 seconds
How big is Southern Michelin ant compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Southern Michelin ant about 0.38 km/h (0.24 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
It goes hunting both on the ground and under the ground.
2
A colony is quite small, usually tens or hundreds of ants, at most about 2000.
3
People brought it to New Zealand by accident. There it is now the biggest ant that lives in the wild.
you asked
Most asked questions about Southern Michelin ant
?Where does the southern Michelin ant live?
In Australia and on the North Island of New Zealand, under logs and stones.
?How big is the southern Michelin ant?
The workers are 4.5 to 8 millimetres long. The queens are bigger.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Amblyopone australis
- Named by
- Erichson, 1842
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Amblyopone australis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by April Nobile. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
Bug Wiki honey jar For grown-ups: Bug Wiki is free, with no ads and no tracking. A small tip helps keep it online.Leave a tip
Black garden ant
Bullet ant
Pharaoh ant
Argentine ant
Red imported fire ant
Yellow crazy ant
Strawberry spider
Priest cicada
Maple spanworm moth
Smoky-winged woodlouse fly
Heller's isopod
Feathered thorn