Black-headed bull ant

The black-headed bull ant is a big Australian ant with a black head, a red middle and yellow legs. Its jaws are longer than its head and have 13 teeth. It goes out looking for food in the evening and at night.

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Fun facts
It decorates its nest mound with little pebbles, soil crumbs and bits of plants.
The workers start looking for food about an hour before sunset.
Some cockroaches can squirt a liquid that confuses the ants so they can escape.
Echidnas like to eat its larvae and pupae.
The queen is the biggest in the nest, up to about 2.6 centimetres long.
Most asked questions about Black-headed bull ant
?How big is the black-headed bull ant?
A worker is about 2 centimetres long, which is huge for an ant.
?What does the black-headed bull ant eat?
The adults drink sweet plant juices and catch insects for their larvae.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Myrmecia nigriceps
- Named by
- Mayr, 1862
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Myrmecia nigriceps (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 patrickkavanagh. CC BY 2.0, 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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