Ants have six legs which are covered by tiny hairs. Ants use these hairs to clean their two antennae. Each leg has three joints. Ants are little. Ants like sugar! There is a Movie called Antz. Ants can make nests 4 meters under the soil. Ants of most species include workers, males and females. Workers are small, but strong. Workers of the Formica japonica ant weighing 0.004 g can walk while holding something weighing 5 times the body weight in the mouth and can even drag a 25-times heavier thing.The average life expectancy of an ant is 45-60 days. Ants use their antenae not only for touch, but also for their sense of smell. The head of the ant has a pair of large, strong jaws. The jaws open and shut sideways like a pair of scissors. Adult ants cannot chew and swallow solid food. Instead they swallow the juice which they squeeze from pieces of food. They throw away the dry part that is left over. The ant has two eyes, each eye is made of many smaller eyes.They are called compound eyes. The abdomen of the ant contains two stomachs. One stomach holds the food for itself and second stomach is for food to be shared with other ants. Like all insects, the outside of their body is covered with a hard armour this is called the exoskeleton. Ants have four distinct growing stages, the egg, larva, pupa and the adult.There are over 10000 known species of ants. Each ant colony has at least one or more queens.The job of the queen is to lay eggs which the worker ants look after. Ants are clean and tidy insects. Some worker ants are given the job of taking the rubbish from the nest and putting it outside in a special rubbish dump! Each colony of ants has its own smell. In this way, intruders can be recognized straight away. Many ants such as the common Red species have a sting which they use to defend their nest.