Q 01/05

Ants belong to the same insect order as which of these?

A) Beetles

B) Butterflies

C) Flies

D) Wasps

Answer · why

D) Wasps

Wasps share the order Hymenoptera with ants and bees, and ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors. The furry insects known as velvet ants are not ants a...

Q 02/05

A 2022 study estimated that roughly how many ants are alive on Earth?

A) 20 million

B) 20 billion

C) 20 trillion

D) 20 quadrillion

Answer · why

D) 20 quadrillion

20 quadrillion, which works out at about 2.5 million ants for every person alive. Together they are thought to outweigh all the world's wild birds and...

Q 03/05

Which US state is believed to have had no ants at all until people brought them?

A) Alaska

B) Hawaii

C) Maine

D) North Dakota

Answer · why

B) Hawaii

Hawaii lies so far from any continent that ants never reached it on their own. Every one of the dozens of species living there today arrived with peop...

Q 04/05

The original West Germanic meaning of the word ant was what?

A) The digger

B) The biter

C) The crawler

D) The builder

Answer · why

B) The biter

The biter, or strictly 'the biter-off', from Germanic roots meaning 'off' and 'cut'. Another old English name for the insect, pismire, is said to come...

Q 05/05

The scientific study of ants is called what?

A) Entomography

B) Apiology

C) Arachnology

D) Myrmecology

Answer · why

D) Myrmecology

Myrmecology takes its name from myrmex, the Greek for ant. Its most famous figure, E. O. Wilson, worked out how ants recognise their dead and carry th...