Hercules Ant

• Unlike termites, it does not digest cellulose: it tunnels into wood purely to live in it, and its food is insects and the sugary honeydew provided by aphids.
• It survives winters of tens of degrees below zero by building up glycerol in its tissues, a natural antifreeze.
• A colony can live for more than twenty years, and its queen is one of the longest-lived in the insect world.
• It does not eat wood: it excavates it with its mandibles to make the nest and pushes the debris out, unlike termites, which do digest it.
• The queen can live between ten and fifteen years.
• It has three worker castes (major, media and minor): the large ones defend the nest and forage, the small ones excavate and tend the brood.
• It forms satellite nests connected to the main one by underground tunnels, in warmer, drier places, where it keeps the older larvae, the pupae and the reproductives.
• A colony takes between three and six years to grow large.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (insect)

Habitat and environment

Conifer and mixed forests of northern Europe, Asia and North America

Gestation / incubation

From egg to worker, between 8 and 10 weeks

Sources consulted: AntWiki; Wikipedia (Camponotus herculeanus); Encyclopaedia Britannica; Fichas de especie de Camponotus herculeanus