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LOOKING AT ANIMAL HOMES |
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What do you think it would be like to share a home with hundreds of your relatives and friends? Some insects live in large groups called colonies. Their homes are a little like insect cities, where huge numbers of them live together in complex, intricately designed structures. However, in an insect colony, unlike in a city, there are no separate compartments for individual families. It's more like living in the military - everyone eats together, works together, and sleeps in the same area together. Scroll down to read more!
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Wasp Nest | Carpenter Ant Colony |
| ROLL OVER the dotted line to "build" these nests yourself! |
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| Who lives in this home? |
A wasp's nest is home to as many as 500 wasps.  |
The nest is home to a colony of carpenter ants--as many as several
thousands of them! |
| Where is it built? |
Wasp's nests are built off the ground, in trees and sometimes under the roofs of people's homes. | Carpenter ant nests are found in tree trunks, or sometimes in the wooden beams of buildings. |
| What is it made of and how is it built? |
Every wasp's nest is started by a queen wasp, who gathers and chews up wood particles to make a kind of "wasp paper," from which she builds a few six-sided cells. She lays her eggs in these cells. The eggs hatch into worker wasps, who build more layers of cells on top of the first. | Carpenter ants build their homes by chewing tunnels in the wood. |
| What does it look like outside? |
A wasp's nest can be as much as 18" wide. It has a dry, papery surface. | You can't always tell from looking at the outside if a piece of wood is home to carpenter ants. Exterminators knock on wood to listen for a hollow sound that tells them ants may be living inside. |
| How is it built inside? |
There are eight or more layers of paper cells, joined together with columns of paper. Each cell is closed at the top, with an opening at the bottom. | Each nest consists of an intricate network of many connecting tunnels and "rooms." |
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