Compact carpenter ant
The compact carpenter ant is a carpenter ant from Mexico and Central America. Its nests can have more than one queen, which is rare for carpenter ants. Several other animals copy its look so that hungry hunters leave them alone.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Four different animals pretend to be this ant: two spiders, a bug and a mantis.
One jumping spider copies it so well, even walking and waving its feelers like the ant, that the two are hard to tell apart.
In the dry season it drinks lots of nectar from one kind of orchid.
In the wet season it switches to other nectar and small insects.
It is one of only three kinds of carpenter ants that can have several queens in one nest.
Most asked questions about Compact carpenter ant
?Why do spiders copy the compact carpenter ant?
Predators tend to avoid these ants, so animals that look like them are left alone too.
?What does the compact carpenter ant eat?
Nectar from flowers, especially an orchid in the dry season, and small insects in the wet season.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Camponotus planatus
- Named by
- Roger, 1863
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Short carpenter ant
Where the facts come from
- Camponotus planatus (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 Katja Schulz from Washington, D. C., USA. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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