Ants are really captivating insects even though most people only think of them as a nuisance. They are extremely hard workers and they have elaborated colonies under ground. Each of the ants has a particular occupation to do and they do it very well.

Ants construct a lot of different types of homes. Several ants construct elementary little mounds out of dirt or sand. Ants as all insects, have three body divisions, head, thorax, and abdomen. Ants which have accumulated some nectar can carry more than they need for themselves in their crops and this excess can be divided with other members of the colony when they come back to the nest. This sharing is done when one ant passes a drop of liquid from its crop into its mouth and a second ant collects it in her mouth. This is called 'trophallaxis' and looks to us like two ants kissing, it is as significant to the ants as kissing is to us, if not more so.

There are more than 12,000 different species of ants out there and they are detected in locations all over the globe. Some of them are very small and brown in color. They tend not to be very harmful at all. Additional species of ants including the fire ants are bigger and they do bite. They will cause the skin to burn and to become red and inflamed.

Ants are champion earthmovers--they move more earth than any other organism including earthworms (who are no slouches in the dirt-moving occupation, as you may know!). Ants grow up in only a few days and live a very busy, but short, life. Also they experience four distinct growing stages, the egg, larva, pupa and the adult. Biologists classify ants as a particular group of wasps.

They feed on a sugary aphid elimination called honeydew and, consequently, protect the aphids from predators. Ants are social insects that live in well-organized colonies. Almost all of the ants in a colony are the wingless infertile females, called workers, normally seen on or around an ant hill. Ants conduct complex social organizations, constructing projects, and communications. Numerous groups of animals depend on leaders. Ants for example, drop pheromones as they search for nutrient to bring back to the colony. Other ants follow these trails and converge on those where pheromones are the strongest (they're topped up more often on shorter paths).

Ants are a little-noticed but crucial part of the tallgrass prairie fauna. There are maybe 100 species of ants that may be found in prairie tracts over the whole area, of which about 60 are normally found in prairies. Ants also have a constriction between the thorax and abdomen that gives them a "pinched-waist" visual aspect. The constricted part of the abdomen is named the pedicel, and the fat, main part of the abdomen is named the gaster. Ants range in color from red to black, and they can range in size from one-quarter inch for a worker carpenter ant to three-quarters of an inch for a queen carpenter ant.