1. Focus Questions for ‘Exploding Ants’
By: Angela

2. Why do different animals have different food needs?
Different animals have different food needs because if they all had to eat the same food, there wouldn’t be enough food and we would all die.

3. How are repletes different from ordinary worker ants?
Repletes are different from ordinary worker ants because repletes store food in their abdomens and they soon become fat. Then, when the other ants need food and they can’t find any, they make the repletes regurgitate some of the food in their abdomen by touching their antenae with the repletes antenae.
Replete
Ordinary worker ant

4. Why do soldier ants explode?
Soldier ants explode because they need to protect their colony somehow. In this manner, they violently contract their muscles and that leads up to exploding and spewing out deadly chemicals (only for the bug or insect) and killing or gluing it’s opponents in place.

5. Why do owls swallow their prey whole?
Owls swallow their prey whole because they just don’t take the time to pick out the fleshy nutritious parts. Good timing equals gross food.
An owl
owl pellet