How old can an ant get?

How old can an ant get? We get this question a lot, and the answer is less simple than you might think. It depends on the species, but above all on what kind of ant it is: a male, a worker or a queen. Food, how hard they work and whether they manage to avoid being eaten or crushed also play a part.

Males: only a few weeks

Male ants live very short lives. They are born to mate during the nuptial flight, and they die soon after. Their whole life usually lasts only a few weeks. In the nest they do not really do anything: they do not help with the work and are even fed by the workers until it is time to fly out.

Workers: months to years

Workers live a lot longer, because they have to care for the colony. They gather food, look after the brood and defend the nest. How long they live differs a lot per species. In general, small ants live shorter lives than large ants. In some species a worker lives only a few months, in others a few years.

Queens: sometimes decades

Queens live the longest by far. A well-known case is a Lasius niger queen that reached almost 29 years in captivity, one of the oldest insects ever recorded. That is an exception, but many queens live for many years, and there may be species whose queens get even older. You can read more about this species in our Lasius niger care guide.

Why do queens live so much longer than workers with the same genes? A queen spends her life deep inside the safe nest, is fed and cleaned by the workers and hardly runs any risks. Researchers think this is exactly why evolution allowed queens to age so slowly, while workers, who face danger outside the nest every day, live much shorter lives.

What does this mean for ant keepers?

In the wild, ants rarely get really old. Workers get injured or eaten, and colonies are sometimes attacked and taken over by other colonies. A queen can also reach a point where she can no longer lay fertilised eggs, because the sperm she stored during the nuptial flight has run out. Then no new workers are born and the colony slowly dwindles.

At home you have much more influence. With good care, peace and quiet, and a proper winter rest for species that need one, your queen can live for a very long time. A colony you start today can stay with you for many years, so choose a species that suits you. Not sure where to start? Read which ant species to choose for your first ant farm.

So how old can an ant get?

Ants can live to be quite old, but in nature it does not happen often. Every species is different, but larger ants usually live longer than smaller ones. Looking for a species with a long-lived queen? Have a look at carpenter ants such as Camponotus herculeanus or Camponotus ligniperda, or at our Lasius niger colonies.

Sources

• Keller, L. and Genoud, M. (1997). Extraordinary lifespans in ants: a test of evolutionary theories of ageing. Nature 389, 958-960.

• AntWiki. Lasius niger.