Escamolera ant
The escamolera ant lives in dry lands in the southwest of the United States and in Mexico. It builds amazing underground nests full of chambers that look like Swiss cheese. One colony can have as many as 250,000 ants.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It fills its nest chambers with a spongy, cardboard-like material made of soil and its own spit.
The queen hides in a safe spot about 6 to 8 metres away from the main room where the babies are kept.
The workers walk along trails 2 to 3 centimetres wide on the ground.
When it gets very hot at midday, they stop working and hide under stones.
People collect the babies from its nests, and one nest can be used for 4 to 12 years.
Most asked questions about Escamolera ant
?Where does the escamolera ant live?
In dry and half-dry lands from Colorado and Texas down through Mexico.
?How many ants live in one nest?
From a few hundred up to about 250,000 ants.
?What does the escamolera ant eat?
Almost anything, but mostly sweet honeydew from aphids and similar bugs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Liometopum apiculatum
- Named by
- Mayr, 1870
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Liometopum apiculatum (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.
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