Karen Pope, age 10, of Gastonia, No. Carolina, for her question:
Do ants have teeth?
A busy little ant never needs to visit the dentist, for she has no pearly teeth. True, she bites, chews and nibbles and does a lot of other things that we do. But she does these things with an amazing assortment of outside fixtures. These attachments are more durable than our teeth, and also more useful. For example, a tiny worker ant can use her toothy attachments to hoist and carry a bundle that weighs 50 times more than she does.
An ant has no bones, no spine and no teeth. Her body is sheathed in a cuticle called an exoskeleton an outside skeleton that holds her firmly in shape. Her bullet shaped head is somewhat like a tough little space helmet. All the attachments she needs are fixed to the outside and connected to nerves that lead inside to her little brain. Her mouth is just a small round hole, with no inside jaws or chompers.
The attachments on the outside of her space helmet are small neat and remarkable. She has eyes that see in all directions and a pair of sensitive feelers that also act like dainty fingers. Five sets of head attachments are fixed around the outside of her mouth. These mouth parts serve as teeth, tools and weapons and they have interesting names.
The labrum is a fused flap, where the ant's upper lip should be. On each side it has a sense organ to test food and other items. Her remarkable mandibles are :really outside jaws that work better than inside jaws. They move on hinges, somewhat like a pair of tongs. When closed, the points meet in front of her mouth. When opened for use, they act as grabbers and grippers, pinchers and biters, chompers and rippers. Some ants use them as scissors to snip neat holes in leaves and for delicate sewing jobs. The ant also uses them to hoist and carry bundles above her head. If your teeth were as strong as her mandibles, you could use them to lift and carry a truck weighing 2 1/2 tons.
The dependable mandibles need help from other mouth parts. The smaller maxillas are too weak to act as crushers. But they can grip small objects. They also have a pair of sense organs for testing and helping to guide the heavy work. The labium is where the ant's lower lip would be. When she was a growing larva, it was two separate parts. After her pupa stage, she emerged as an adult and the two parts were fused in one flat plate. It too has a pair of sense organs, one on each side. They gather still more information for the ant's remarkable team of mouth parts.
All insects have similar basic mouth parts, though some are remodeled to cope with different diets. Ants are chewers. Moths sip liquid food. Their mouth parts are adapted to act as long, pliable drinking straws. The mouth parts of the blood¬sucking mosquito form a long beak. It is a tool kit with tiny stabbers, saws, a hollow needle to give injections and another one that acts as a syphon.