Flying Ant Day: When is it? Have you seen any?
Picture the scene, it's a nice sunny afternoon and then suddenly an ANT FLIES AT YOUR FACE... Every summer there is a day when thousands of giant flying ants emerge from their nests roughly at the same time - known as Flying Ant Day.Despite the name, it can happen over a number of days and sees giant black ants with wings taking flight across the UK in warm weather.
Why do ants fly?
Flying Ant Day usually arrives during the summer months. Flying queens, which are larger, along with smaller male flying ants fly off to set-up new colonies.Although there is no such thing as a specific 'Ant Day', scientists have found that ants are good at short term weather prediction so chose a warm and calm day to travel.This is often in mid to late summer in the UK but varies across the country.
Speaking to BBC Newsround, Cesar Wang, from Ant HQ, a flying Ant expert and ant-keeper who supplies ants for research said: "Rather than being a single day, it's more like a season, so it can actually start as early as June, all the way into September. "For example, I'm based in London and in London it's a very developed city, loads of buildings, so heat tends to accumulate a bit more, so ant nests which may be beneath paving slabs which absorb heat. "Their [the ants] development tends to increase and tends to be a little bit faster than usual, so these queen ants will hatch a bit earlier." Noting that flying ants may already be making an appearance this year, Cesar explained that "this year we've had quite a hot spring so we'll typically see flying ants emerging a little bit earlier."
Are flying ants anything to worry about?
While it might not be particularly pleasant to have several large ants flying at your face, Cesar says they're completely "harmless". Queen ants can be a bit scary if you've never seen them before, they're definitely much larger than the typical worker ants that you see in the park or garden."But here in the UK, there are 60-odd species and none of them have a lethal sting or bite and they won't be able to do anything to a human." Phew!
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