Carol Patton, age 14, of Shreveport, Louisiana, for her question:
How long does a regular ant live?
No doubt we may say that the regular ant is the worker, because she is the most numerous type in the colony. Less numerous types are the soldiers, who guard the nest, and the males, who aim to mate with the future queens. The rarest ant in the nest is the queen mother, who lays the eggs. They become replacements for departed ants and also swell the ranks of all types in the colony.
The life of a worker ant is crammed with a multitude of duties. You might think she works herself to death in just a few weeks or months. Not at all. Barring accidents, she can keep up her ceaseless round of toil toil toil for maybe seven long years. She has no vacation, no time for hobbies or recreation. Everything she does is regulated by set rules that she must obey. All her amazing energy is spent on working dutifully for the family colony.
However, the little slave is not expected to work during her infancy. She begins life as an egg, laid by the queen mother. Grown nursemaid workers tend the egg with great care, and it hatches into a grubby larva. The nursemaid ants feed it, lick it clean, take it up for an airing and carry it to the comfortable rooms inside the nest. The larva molts several times as it gorws. Then it becomes a sleeping pupa. When it wakes, it comes forth fully grown. The nursemaids help this frail young worker through her first few hours. Then she is expected to take up her never ending round of duties. The helpless infant stages of her life may last several weeks or months, depending on the season and perhaps on her ant species.
There are 3,500 known ant species, and their life styles differ. In most cases, a regular worker ant is trained by her older sisters to learn a series of special duties, one by one. Her first training. is in the nursery, where she learns to tend the various stages of developing males, young queens, soldiers and future workers.
If she hatches and begins work in the spring, her nursemaid training may last only a few weeks. Then she graduates to work outside the nest. She goes with other outdoor workers to forage for food and bring home supplies to feed the stay at homes. If she hatches in late summer, she stays on nursery duty through the winter. Come spring she joins the other outdoor workers. The risks outdoors are much greater, and she may meet her doom after a few days or weeks. But with luck, she may toil away and survive for seven years or so, then you see a regular picnic ant, there is no way to tell whether she is a few months or almost seven years old. But you can be sure that the winged males are no older than a few weeks or months. Their only duty is done when they mate with the future queens; then they die. The soldiers are specialized workers. Some fall in combat; some live as long as seven years. The queen mother is protected and pampered all her days and she may live as long as 15 years.