Weaver Ant

insects · builders · teamwork

Architects of leaves. Weaver ants construct their nests by pulling leaves together and using silk produced by their larvae to glue everything in place. It's like they're using their own babies as a building tool to create amazing homes in trees.

Two sizes, two jobs. Weaver ant colonies have two very different sizes of workers: the big ones are about 10 millimeters long and guard and expand the colony, while the tiny ones are half that size and stay home caring for babies and feeding scale insects.

Enormous supercolonies. A single weaver ant colony can spread across many trees with more than a hundred separate nests and over half a million individual ants all working together.

Farming tiny insects. Weaver ants don't just hunt for food, they also keep scale insects (tiny bugs) like livestock, 'milking' them for their sweet honeydew to drink, kind of like how humans keep cows for milk.