A Learning Link to the Arboretum of Los Angeles County

Ants are social creatures that work together to protect each other for the common good of their colony. Each ant plays an important role. The queen ant lays the eggs and rules the colony. Soldier ants protect the queen and the nest. Worker ants gather food. And nest ants clean the nest and take care of the younger ants. Most of the ants in a colony are females.

Ants are perhaps the strongest of nature's creatures--they can lift 50 times their own body weight using just their jaws. Just as amazing is how fast ants can run. If an ant were the same size as a human, it could run five times quicker than the fastest sprinter. Ever wonder how ants identify each other? They do it by touching their antennae together to check scent. Each of the ants from the same nest has a very specific odor.

And though individual ants don't weigh much (only a couple of grams), the combined weight of all the ants in the world would outweigh the combined weight of all the people in the world!

Starting Monday, you can see huge ants, as well as other gigantic insects at the arboretum. That's when David Rogers' "Big Bugs" sculpture exhibit comes to Los Angeles. Sundays are "Big Bugs" Family Days with special educational and entertaining programs about all kinds of insects. And on Aug. 20, you can see "It's Good to Be an Ant," a new play about life in an ant colony, performed by kids from Kidspace Children's Museum. Performances are at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. For more information, call the Big Bug Hotline at (626) 821-3234 or visit http://www.arboretum.org.

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This information was provided by the Arboretum of Los Angeles County, at 301 N. Baldwin Ave., Arcadia. (626) 821-3222.