After termites, carpenter ants might be the second most destructive pest to find in our homes. They tear through wooden materials and leave behind destruction. All that being said, these ants are one of the most fascinating creatures in the animal kingdom. Keep reading to learn everything you didn’t know about carpenter ants and how to keep them out of your home with a perimeter pest control application!
Fascinating Facts On Carpenter Ants
Carpenter Ants Don’t Eat Wood
That’s a popular misconception. While they certainly tear through it as voraciously as termites, there’s a fundamental difference. Termites subsist on wood fibers; carpenter ants merely chew them up and spit them out again. They use wooden structures to safely house their colony and create sheltered tunnels where they can move above freely and undisturbed by predators. Even though they don’t eat the wood, carpenter ants still pose a significant risk to your home and can leave it structurally damaged.
Carpenter Ants Can Live A Long Time
Specifically, the queen can live up to 25 years – yes, really! As you can imagine, a carpenter queen living that long will produce hundreds of thousands of eggs. The longer you wait, the more damage your home will receive. That’s one of the reasons carpenter ants are so difficult to get rid of and why exterminating them is crucial.
Carpenter Ants Can Bite
When you think about insect bites, you probably think about spiders, but carpenter ants are known to bite when they feel their nest is threatened. The bites alone are painful enough, but they also produce a type of acid used to increase the pain. Talk about adding salt to a wound!
Carpenter Ants Don’t Have Lungs
It’s true! Most ants don’t have lungs. Instead, they breathe by inhaling oxygen through tiny holes over their entire body.
Carpenter Ants Are Self-Destructive
Some species of carpenter ants can self-destruct when they need to take out an attack. They do this by using their large jaws to rupture the membrane of a part of their body called the gaster. When this membrane is punctured, chemicals are released that kill the enemy and take out the carpenter ant in the process.
Carpenter Ants Are Strong
If you didn’t know, most ants can lift many times their body weight, and carpenter ants are no exception. They can lift 50 times their bodyweight! Pretty impressive for such a small creature.
Carpenter Ants Prey On Termites
While both creatures share a love of delivering into wooden structures, carpenter ants will gladly eat any termites they can find. It’s even been documented that carpenter ants will kill an entire termite colony if there are enough ants. It’s too bad that carpenter ants also burrow into wood – otherwise, they would prove an effective natural remedy for termites!
Carpenter Ants Are Tidy
Since carpenter ants don’t eat the wood but chew it, all that spit up wood fiber has to go somewhere. Worker ants will remove the debris and dead members of the colony. When it comes to tidiness, they’re very similar to us humans!
Carpenter Ants Are Opportunists
While carpenter ants can chew through just about any wood they come across, they’re most attracted to dead or decaying wood – especially if it’s damp. So one of the best ways to discourage them from coming into your home or on your property is removing any source of damp, decaying, or dead wood. Be sure not to store firewood directly next to the house either! If you’re curious about what else might be attracting carpenter ants to your property, be sure to ask your lawn care services expert when they visit.
Find Pest Control Near Salt Lake City
Whether you’ve got carpenter ants – or any other unwanted guests in your home – the experts at Ferta-Lawn can help! Our perimeter pest control keeps carpenter ants and many other creepy crawlies out of your home. By creating an invisible barrier around the outside of your home, no matter how small the nook or cranny, bugs will no longer be able to find their way inside. Give yourself the peace of mind you deserve – contact Ferta-Lawn today! Call 801-295-3057 or reach out to us online through our contact form here.
Don’t forget – you can always read more about keeping your lawn green and your home pest- free on our blog page here!
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