Bug card No. 1957 of 4,939

Golden-tailed sugar ant

Camponotus aeneopilosus

Eats: A bit of everything AntsForests and woods6 legs

The golden-tailed sugar ant is almost all black, but its back end is covered in shiny golden hairs. Workers in the same nest come in different sizes, small and bigger ones. It only comes out to work during the day.

Lives in

Eastern Australia, in forests and woodlands

Length

5 to 9 mm (0.2 to 0.35 in)

worker ants

Top speed

about 0.4 km/h (0.25 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Harmless

Many ants can sting or bite! Read about ant venom on Venom Wiki →

What does it eat?

Sugar ants like sweet things, such as the sugary juice that aphids make, and they also eat small insects.

Photo of Golden-tailed sugar ant — Picture by Mark Marathon. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

small enough to sit on your fingernailas long as 1.5 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 9 seconds

How big is Golden-tailed sugar 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)

A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

Golden-tailed sugar ant about 0.4 km/h (0.25 mph)

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

It builds its nest under soil, rocks and sometimes logs.

It looks a lot like spiny ants, but it has no spines on its back.

It is only busy in the daytime and rests at night.

you asked

Most asked questions about Golden-tailed sugar ant

?How big is a golden-tailed sugar ant?

Workers are about 5 to 9 millimetres long.

For bug experts

Scientific name: Camponotus aeneopilosus
Named by: Mayr, 1862
Group: Ants
Family: Formicidae
Classification: Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
Lives on: Australia and Oceania
Also known as: Golden tail sugar ant, Golden black sugar ant

Where the facts come from

Golden tail sugar 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 Mark Marathon. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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