Tawny crazy ant
Nylanderia fulva
Name means: “crazy because it runs around in quick, zigzag ways. Rasberry is after Tom Rasberry, a pest controller in Texas who noticed it”
The tawny crazy ant is a small reddish brown ant covered in fine hairs. It gets its name from the way it rushes about in wild zigzags. It has an amazing secret weapon against fire ants.
Lives in
South America, and now the warm Gulf Coast of the United States
Length
3 mm (0.12 in)
aboutWhat does it eat?
It eats small insects, looks for sweet food on plants and drinks the sugary juice that aphids make.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail🍽️could run across a dinner table in 16 seconds⚡moves 21 times its own body length every second
How big is Tawny crazy 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)
Tawny crazy ant about 0.23 km/h (0.14 mph)
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its nests have many queens and no anthills. They live under stones and piles of stuff.
2
Ant acid, called formic acid, is named after the Latin word for ant.
3
Where it spreads, it can push out almost all other kinds of ants, even fire ants.
you asked
Most asked questions about Tawny crazy ant
?Why is it called a crazy ant?
Because it runs around in fast, unpredictable zigzags.
?How big is a tawny crazy ant?
About 3 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Nylanderia fulva
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- South America, North America
- Also known as
- Rasberry crazy ant
Where the facts come from
- Rasberry crazy ant (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 Bentleypkt. 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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