Gabrielle Marks | Reviewed: 6/11/2025
Ants are amazing, resourceful creatures capable of many remarkable feats, including communicating with one another through scent and leaving “breadcrumb” trails when they find food. Here are nine amazingly bizarre things that ants do.
Share a Bathroom
Ants use their feces for a variety of purposes, from mixing it with mud to build nests to wrapping it in leaves to grow their food. Now, researchers have found that when inside the nest, the ants dedicate a space to be used as a toilet, where all ants relieve themselves in one spot. Thousands of ants sharing a common bathroom . . . and you complained about sharing with your siblings!
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Take 253 Naps Per Day
Worker ants average 253 naps per day that last for only 1.1 minutes each for a combined total of 4.8 hours of sleep. While out foraging for food, they drop in place while the other ants work around them. It is not uncommon for 20% of the workers to be sleeping at any one time, while 80% continue to work around them. That’s some supersonic power napping!
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Photo: Brant Kelly | Creative Commons
Red fire ants have created a raft by placing the brood on the bottom for the base and then linking together to float. The queen is protected in the center.
Make Ant Rafts
In the event of a flood, ants will quickly link together, building an “ant raft.” The brood, which includes the youngest colony members—eggs, larvae, and pupae —are incredibly buoyant and are placed on the bottom, serving as the base of the raft. They will then place the queen in the center and surround her with workers.
Eat Their Young
The larvae in an ant colony play an essential role in providing food for the entire colony by digesting it into a liquid that the adults can eat. Still, when times get tough, and no other food is available, the larvae serve as a great source of protein for the adult ants, especially the queen.
Use Their Poop for Food Purposes
Attine ants are fungus-growing ants that grow gardens of fungi for colony consumption. Leaves are brought back to the colony, where worker ants will chew and grind them into a pulp. They add the pulp to fecal matter to form pellets. They then stack the pellets into a hill, placing the fungus on top, which provides a surface for it to grow and multiply, thereby creating an independent food source for the colony.
Create and Maintain a Colony Landfill
refuse pile where they discard all their waste, including nest litter, feces, and dead individuals, which can grow quite large. In fact, the leafcutter ant, known for producing high volumes of trash, often has refuse piles that could fill a bathtub to the top.
Leave the Nest Right Before They Die
Just as they lived life thinking only of the colony, ants that are close to death do the same. Research has found that ants from small colonies will leave their nest to die in seclusion. The behavior minimizes the risk of infecting the colony.
Eat Only Pre-digested Food
Ants can only ingest liquids. So, how do those ant species that eat other insects manage to digest the food? They leave it to the babies of the nest. Adult ants bring solid food back to the nest and chew it into a pulp. They then feed it to the larvae, which ingest it, digest it, and excrete it in a liquid form. All the colony members then share this liquid.
Practice Self-Mutilation
Ants fly during a nuptial flight. Some species can fly during what is called the nuptial flight. Fertile females (virgin queens) and males have wings and will fly to mate. After mating, the males will fall from the sky and die. The queen will search for a safe place to lay her eggs. She will then chew off her wings.