Navigating big-headed ant
The navigating big-headed ant is a tiny reddish-brown ant, never bigger than 2.5 millimetres. It has two kinds of workers: small ones that do most jobs, and big-headed ones with strong jaw muscles. It comes from the tropics of the Americas but has travelled around the world.
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Fun facts
The big-headed workers guard the nest and cut up food.
The small workers have more room in their heads for brains, and the big-headed ones have more room for muscles.
Scientists first described it from ants found in Germany, hidden in orchids shipped from Mexico.
For many years it was mixed up with other look-alike ants.
Most asked questions about Navigating big-headed ant
?Why is it called big-headed?
Some of its workers have very big heads full of muscles for fighting and cutting food.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pheidole navigans
- Named by
- Forel, 1901
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Wandering big-headed ant
Where the facts come from
- Pheidole navigans (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 Gino Brignoli. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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