Ants are everywhere. We may find them in our house and outside, crawling, and always searching for something. A type of ant that lives in Central and South America called the leaf-cutter ant is named after what it does: they cut pieces of leaves and carry them back to their colonies to deposit in their fungus farms.
But something unusual was discovered about these ants. A recent study shows that a species of leaf-cutter ants have an armour-like exoskeleton (a skeleton outside the body; humans have endoskeletons inside the body) made of calcite and magnesium. Many animals’ bodies contain these materials, but the leaf-cutter ant is the first type of insect found which has calcite in its body.
The exoskeleton in these ants is made of minuscule crystals that protect them from other ants and infections.
This is a surprising discovery because leaf-cutter ants are one of the most studied insects, yet something new was found. This leads to the question of how much we don’t know about the ants we see every day.
