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Sticker of Japanese carpenter ant
Bug card No. 2386 of 4,939

Japanese carpenter ant

Camponotus japonicus
Eats: A bit of everythingAntsForests and woods6 legs

The Japanese carpenter ant is a big black ant from eastern Asia. It is one of the largest ants there is. Its workers come in different sizes, and the biggest ones are called soldiers.

Lives in
Eastern Asia, including Japan, Korea, China, Mongolia, Siberia and the Philippines
Length
0.6 to 1.5 cm (0.24 to 0.59 in)
Top speed
about 0.52 km/h (0.32 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It eats many kinds of food and also looks after aphids to collect their sweet honeydew.
For real!Photo of Japanese carpenter ant
Picture by KKPCW. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Japanese carpenter ant about 1.5 cm long (0.59 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)A crayon about 9 cm (3.5 in)
as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 6.9 seconds

How big is Japanese carpenter ant compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The queen is about 17 millimetres long, and before her wedding flight she has four see-through brown wings.

2

Workers come in three sizes, from 6 to 15 millimetres.

3

A caterpillar of one butterfly smells like an ant, so the ants carry it into their nest and feed it like their own baby.

4

It can smell whether another ant is from its own nest or a stranger.

5

The biggest ants of this kind live in northern China.

you asked

Most asked questions about Japanese carpenter ant

?How big is the Japanese carpenter ant?

Workers are 6 to 15 millimetres long, and the queen is about 17 millimetres.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Camponotus japonicus
Group
Ants
Family
Formicidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
Lives on
Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Camponotus japonicus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by KKPCW. CC BY-SA 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.

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Also at home here: Forests and woods

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