What are Ant Mounds Made Out of?

Ant Mound Composition

• Ant mounds, or ant hills, are composed mostly of soil, but ants will build mounds out of whatever material is suitable and readily available. Sawdust, clay and sand are other building materials that ants will use. Ants also commonly incorporate grasses, vegetable matter, sticks and even bits of trash into their mounds for added strength and stability.

Ant Mound Construction

• Ants have a strong social hierarchy that is put into action when the mound is built. The worker ants are the ones who actually build the mound. They transport dirt and other materials to the mound location in their jaws (mandibles). It takes hundreds of workers moving dirt to make even a small mound. While the mound is built, other ants protect the queen and her eggs underground. Ant mounds are usually built from the top outward, meaning ants carry dirt to the top of the mound and then spread out from there.

Ant Mounds and Ant Colonies

• Ant mounds are not actually where ants primarily live Though some ants dwell in the mound, most ants live in huge underground colonies for which the mound serves as a protective entrance. These colonies can be several feet below the surface. The colonies are composed of long, interlaced tunnels that the ants eat, work and lay eggs in. Ant colonies can be unbelievably large, especially supercolonies, which may extend outward several thousand square miles from the origin, while remaining mostly underground.

Other Ant Mound Information

• Some ant species actually sculpt mounds into different shapes. These mounds can extend several feet into the air and appear almost like man-made art. Some humans even use these large mounds to make items such as clay bricks because the ants have done all of the work of digging the clay out of the ground. Also, some people believe that ants can predict rain and will reinforce their mounds accordingly. However, there is no scientific evidence for this. Lastly, many ant species do not build mounds, living instead in or under trees or in other kinds of nests.