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Kimberly Simon, age 10, of Gary, Ind., for her question:

DO ANTS LAY EGGS?

    When you break open an earthy ant nest, you discover a lot of white, oval objects. They look for all the world like eggs  but the experts assure us that they are not. This does not mean that ants do not lay eggs. They do, and there are eggs among the ruined nest. However, they are too small to be noticeable in the crumbly dirt.

Possibly the ants outnumber all the other creatures in the world. They are, of course, insects and all the world's insects hatch from eggs. There are no exceptions to this rule. However, various insects develop from egg to adult through very different stages. The childhood development of an ant is very complicated. But when she becomes an adult, she changes hardly at all and she may live to a ripe old age of 7 years or more.

The ant nest is a family colony. It is like a crowded city of a few hundred or many thousands or more than a million relatives.  Everything is run.by very strict rules and regulations, and every ant knows exactly what he or she must do. The nest includes one or more queens who produce the eggs, a number of males, armies of busy workers and perhaps others who act as soldiers.

During a busy day, a queen mother may lay 15,000 eggs  though you have to strain your eyes to see the tiny things. The eggs hatch into grubby larvas, which molt their skins several times as they grow. Then they become sleeping pupas and may or may not spin silken cocoons around their tough skins. When the pupas hatch, they are adult ants  though rather weak and still uneducated.

The developing infants, from egg to adult, are tenderly tended by teams of busy nursemaid ants. These well trained baby sitters do not build permanent nurseries. Instead, they carry the developing broods from room to room, depending upon where the moisture and temperature are just right. Sometimes they bring the large white cocoons outdoors in the sunshine where we may mistake them for ant eggs.

Meantime, other workers forage for food. They swallow the juices and spit out the solids.

Some of the liquid nourishment is stored in their crops, or social stomachs. Drops of this food are brought up to feed the queen and the nursemaids  who feed the growing larvas.

 

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