New chambers and galleries are excavated. For the remainder of her life, which may reach 15 years, the queen is merely an egg-laying machine. In later years, males and females with wings suddenly appear outside the colony and launch into their nuptial flight. These young females start new colonies and the males die a day or two later. The queens come from larvae which have been specially fed, and the males come from unfertilized eggs.
Various ants eat almost any kind of plant or animal material.
They are also great scavengers, stripping flesh from the bones of dead animals and drafting away dead insects. The Army Ants of tropical America and Africa are famous for their predatory habits. No living thing along their line of march, even man, can resist their tearing jaws. Some of our local ants raid the colonies of other kinds, carry away their pupae, and make slaves of the workers that emerge from them. Few things are more interesting in the schoolroom than a healthy colony of ants in an observation nest.