Pharaoh ant
The pharaoh ant is a tiny yellow or light brown ant, so pale you can almost see through it. It comes from warm places but now lives in heated buildings all over the world. One nest can have many queens.
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Fun facts
A big nest can split into smaller ones: some queens, workers and babies just move to a new spot.
It uses three different smell trails. One lasts for days, and another fades in just a few minutes.
The workers stop at night and start work around 8 in the morning.
The boy ants have wings but do not fly.
Its eyes are not very good, so it finds its way mostly by smell.
Most asked questions about Pharaoh ant
?How big is a pharaoh ant?
Very small. Workers are only about 2 to 4.5 millimetres long.
?Why are pharaoh ants a problem?
They live in warm buildings and get into food, and are very hard to get rid of because one nest has many queens.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Monomorium pharaonis
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Ants
- Family
- Formicidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Pharaoh 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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