A phylogeny of the extant ant subfamilies. *Cerapachyinae is paraphyletic ‡ The previous dorylomorph subfamilies were synonymized under Dorylinae by Brady et al. in 2014
Ants are a kind of insect that live together in big groups. Scientists sometimes use the name Formicidae when talking about all of the different kinds of ants that have lived.
Ants are a lot like wasps and bees. They all came from the same kind of animal a long time ago, but now they are different. There are about 22,000 different kinds of ants, but we only know of 12,500 for sure. Every kind of ant has a thin part in the middle of their body and two long body parts on their heads called antennae.