Gene Tho:vias, age 10, of Iontoursville, Penn. For his question:
What are fire ants?
There are thousands of different kinds of ants in the world, with each kind making a fascinating study in itself. The little reported fire ant makes her home in our Southland. She is rusty brown in color and has many features in common with all her ant cousins around the world. But in one way she is not so attractive, The fire ant has a fiery little stinger.
No one seems to know for sure how the fire ant got her name. It may be because. her bright brown color reminded someone of burning wood. But it is more likely she was earned by someone who was bitten by her sharp nippers 'or stung, rlany ants have stingers, but this nasty little insect is armed with one of the most painful stingers in the ant world.
She is a slender creature and she rates as a medium sized ant. It would take five fire ants standing nose to tail to measure one inch. Like all the thousands of different ants in the world, she has a slender neck and a slander waist. Her chunky little head carries a pair of sensitive feelers and her mouth is fitted with a pair of fierce nippers.
Her tapering abdomen ends in a fine needle. This is her stinger. It is strong enough to pierce the skin of a baby bird. It is fed with poison strong enough to kill the helpless little creature. The firs ant is a meat eater and along with her sister firs ants she is a dangerous enemy to many small creatures of the wild.
The range of the fire ant covers our southern states and the Gulf states as far west as the Rockies. One of her favorite victims is the bobwhite quail who builds her nest on the ground. Some years ago, the United States Department of Agriculture did some detective work on the destructive fire ant.
The ant nests or many of there were destroyed. Even so, it was estimated that fire ants destroy lot’s of the baby quail.
The little murderer and her sisters swarm, into a bird’s nest as the eggs are hatching. Each grabs a bite of a baby bird's skin in her nippers and stabs in her deadly stinger. Other nesting birds of the wild are also attacked by the criminal fire ant. She also attacks mice and other small animals.
Not all the various ants are as destructive as the fire ant. Some feed on plants which they grow on their own midget farms. A11 ants are social insects which live in fanily colonies. The members of a colony work together on a give and take basis and there are usually a number of odd insects in the nest which are tolerated. But different ant colonies are often rivals and armies of ants wage organized warfare upon each other.