Army Ant Facts for Kids

A Picture of a Army Ants
  • Common Name: Army Ant
  • Kingdom: Animalia
  • Phylum: Arthropoda
  • Class: Insecta
  • Order: Hymenoptera
  • Family: Formicidae
  • Total Species: 200+

14 Army Ant Facts for Kids

  1. An army ant is a generic name used to describe over 200 species of ants.
  2. An army ant can also be referred to as legionary ant or marabunta.
  3. All species of ants that are called army ants are members of Formicidae.
  4. Ant species that are considered army ants are divided into two groups, they are Old World army ants and New World army ants.
  5. Some species of army ants can have a colony with more than 20 million ants.
  6. There are four types of ants found in an army ant colony, and they are workers, soldiers, males and queens.
  7. An army ant is an ant species that is known for aggressive foraging. Army ants forage together in large numbers and can cover a large area.
  8. A group of foraging army ants is called a swarm, swarm raid or column raid.
  9. When army ants go out to forage the foraging party can create a trail that is over 65 feet wide and over 320 feet long.
  10. Army ants are followed by various other animal and insect species who feed on the insects they flush out when foraging.
  11. Army ants can kill upwards of 100,000 insects, spiders and small vertebrates in a single day.
  12. Army ants don’t build permanent nests, instead of a nest, army ants live in a bivouac. The most common place to find an army ant bivouac is in a burrow dug by the ants or a tree trunk.
  13. Army ants complete a process called colony fission about every three years. This is when the colony size gets to large and it splits off into two separate army ant colonies.
  14. The Eciton army ant (Eciton burchellii) is the most studied army ant in the world, and they can be found in Central America and the Amazon jungle.

Additional Resources for Army Ant Facts

About the author
Facts Editor

This is an author profile for articles that are created from a collaborative effort. It is not uncommon that articles on this site were either written, researched or fact checked by several authors and team members. So this author profile will be displayed to reflect that. Our team of editors, writers and fact checkers do extensive research before publishing articles on the site, and we do our best to provide the most accurate information possible.