• Question: how long can ants live up to?

    Asked by to Catherine on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Catherine Offord

      Catherine Offord answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      Hi Kitty,

      Good question! The answer is not so simple – it depends on the species of ant, and also what type of ant it is (e.g. whether it’s a worker ant, a queen ant etc.)

      Most of the worker ants live for a few months or maybe a year or two if they’re lucky. Their lives are often rather dangerous as well, as they spend a lot of time going outside the nest to find food, and so they may be killed by predators, bacteria or fungus.

      However, the queen ant in a colony stays inside the nest. She is usually quite a bit larger and can live much longer. The longest living ant on record is a queen ant in a colony of ‘harvester ants’ (large ants with huge underground colonies) – she lived to be 30 years old!! This is unusual though – a few years is the average, even for queens.

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