Evolution of ants: A bunch of ants
When did ants evolve?
Ants evolved from earlier wasps about 150 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period. The evolution of ants was around the same time that mammals were beginning to become common, soon after the dinosaurs died out.
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More about the Cretaceous
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Where did ants come from?
This is how ants evolved: some wasps lost their wings and couldn’t fly anymore, and some of those evolved into ants (though a few kinds of ants can still fly a little, and some wasps can’t fly). Some ants have even lost their eyes because they live underground and don’t use them.
Evolution of eyes
Why do ants eat bugs?
Ants evolved to be able to eat the grass-eating insects, like grasshoppers, that evolved to eat the new flowering plants about 100 million years ago.
More about grasshoppers
More about flowers
And about birds
So what eats ants?
But soon ants had predators of their own: birds, which evolved from the earlier dinosaurs to be able to eat both ants and grasshoppers.
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