White-footed house ant
The white-footed house ant is a small dark ant from Australia, about 3 millimetres long. It lives in damp woods, but it also likes gardens and fence posts and often moves into houses. It looks so much like a cousin that people often mix them up.
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Fun facts
The ants in its nest share food using special eggs that are made just for eating, not for hatching.
It came to New Zealand by accident and now lives around Auckland and Wellington, and even as far south as Christchurch.
It never lives in Australia's dry Outback. It needs damp places.
It nests under rotten logs, in cracks in stones and even inside the walls of houses.
A baby lacewing can sneak into its nest and eat the ant babies.
Most asked questions about White-footed house ant
?What does the white-footed house ant eat?
Almost anything it finds, plus sweet honeydew from aphids and leafhoppers.
?How big is the white-footed house ant?
The workers are about 3 to 3.4 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Technomyrmex jocosus
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- White-footed ant
Where the facts come from
- Technomyrmex jocosus (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 Erin Prado. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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