The Ant's Nest: A Huge, Underground City (Spectacular Animal Towns) Review

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(More customer reviews)In the year 2005 an amazing anthill was discovered in Northumberland, England.There are giant anthills around the world, but this one stood five and a half feet tall and housed a "colony of about 500,000 wood ants.The hill was nicknamed the ant "Empire State Building" because is reminded them of the tall, stately building.All around the world people see ants, but most don't realize there "are more than 10,000 species."In an underground ant's nest there are many chambers, each designated for a different purpose. For example there are chambers for storing food, one for the queen and some for resting.Ants have a very complex society and some even raid other colonies to capture slaves!

In a colony each ant has a job to do.They gather food, work at harvesting food, build the nest, defend the colony or do things like tend to the young.All of the workers are females.The male's job is "to leave the next and mate with queens from other colonies."In this fascinating book you will learn many things, including the function of the queen, how long ants live, the life cycle of the ant, what they eat, what it takes to start a new colony, how ants communicate, you'll learn what pheromones are, you'll learn about farming ants, army ants and you'll learn many other interesting facts.Do you know that there is a species of ants that keep aphids, much like people keep cows?

This is a very interesting overview of how ants live.The closeup photographs highlight the text to perfection and makes it very interesting.The book was well written and the reader will get a good sense of how the ant functions in its society and the different purpose each ant has in it.One of the more interesting sections was about the "unstoppable" army ants and their predatory ways.In the back of the book is a basic chart about ant colonies (three different species), brief vignettes about two other animal towns (termites and wasps), an index, a glossary and additional recommended book and website resources (accessed through the Bearport website).

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