Black carpenter ant
The black carpenter ant is one of the biggest ants in North America. It is dull black with soft yellowish hairs on its tummy. It makes its home by chewing tunnels in dead, damp wood, like a tiny carpenter.
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Fun facts
Workers in the same nest can be very different sizes, from small ones to super big ones.
It can walk about 90 metres from its nest to find food, leaving a smelly trail so it can find the way back.
A big nest inside wood can make a quiet cracking sound that people can hear.
Small workers collect honeydew and hand it over to bigger workers, who carry it home.
In the forest it helps old dead trees rot away and turn back into soil.
Most asked questions about Black carpenter ant
?Do carpenter ants eat wood?
No. They chew tunnels in wood to live in, but they do not eat it.
?How big is a black carpenter ant?
The biggest workers are about 14 to 17 millimetres long, and queens reach about 2 centimetres.
Myth buster
Myth: Carpenter ants eat wood.
Truth: They do not. They only chew wood to make tunnels to live in, and they throw the bits away.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Camponotus pennsylvanicus
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Black carpenter ant (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 April Nobile. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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