Bulldog ants, also known as "jack jumper" ants, are capable of jumping several inches when their nest has been disturbed. Jumper ants propel themselves by a sudden extension of their middle and hind legs.

Scientists have discovered the world's fastest ant which runs at speeds equivalent of 360 mph in humans. The Saharan silver ant can put in 50 strides a second covering a distance of nearly a meter. To put this in perspective the fastest human sprinters can do four strides a second.

The bullet ant's sting is currently the highest on Schmidt's sting pain index, at 4.0+. Some victims compare the pain to that of being shot, hence the name of the insect. "With a bullet ant sting, the pain is throughout your whole body," adventurer and naturalist Steve Backshall explained on an episode of BBC's Infinite Monkey Cage. "You start shaking, you start sweating, your heart rate goes up, and if you have quite a few of them, you will be passing in and out of consciousness. There will be nothing in your world apart from pain for at least three or four hours."

In their Pulitzer-prize winning book The Ants, researchers Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson estimate that there are upwards of 10,000,000,000,000,000 individual ants alive on Earth at any given time--that's 10 quadrillion.

O. unilateralis needs ants to complete its life cycle. When an ant comes across fungal spores while foraging, the fungus infects the insect and quickly spreads throughout its body. Fungal cells in the ant's head release chemicals that hijack the insect's central nervous system, causing convulsions that make it fall from its high canopy nest onto the forest floor. The fungus then forces the "zombie ant" to climb about 25 centimeters above the ground (optimal height for fungal spore growth and dispersion) and lock its jaw onto a leaf or twig before dying. It then grows a spore-releasing stalk out of the back of the victim's head to infect more ants on the ground below.

During Hurricane Harvey in Texas in 2017, clumps of fire ants, known as rafts, were seen in flooded areas. Each clump had as many as 100,000 individual ants, which formed a temporary floating structure until the colony could find dry land and a new permanent home.

An ant brain has about 250,000 brain cells. A human brain has 100 billion. So a colony of 400,000 ants has collectively the same size brain as a human.

Although the bullet ant is sometimes touted as the world's biggest ant, it maxes out at approximately 1.2 inches (3 cm), whereas a driver ant queen may be up to 2.4 inches (6 cm).

The Dracula ant can snap its mandibles at up to 90 metres a second (more than 200 miles per hour) and go from 0 to 200 mph in 0.000015 seconds, striking 5,000 times faster than the blink of an eye--the fastest animal movement on record.

It's a great way to deter uninvited guests. Just wedge your head into the entryway of your home and don't budge. That's the stubborn strategy of turtle ants who use their heads like wine corks to plug their nests.