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What do leaf cutter ants eat?

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Leaf cutter ants feature strong jaws that vibrate to cut pieces of leaves from various plants. They carry the cut leaves back to their colonies in order to produce food from them. The leaf pieces generally weigh about 20 times an ant's body weight, but leaf cutters can easily carry the plantlife with their strong bodies. read more

Leafcutter ants, a non-generic name, are any of 47 species of leaf-chewing ants belonging to the two genera Atta and Acromyrmex. These species of tropical, fungus-growing ants are all endemic to South and Central America, Mexico, and parts of the southern United States. read more

The leafcutter ants carry the leaf pieces back to their underground nests where the leaves are chewed into a pulp. The decaying pulp is stored with ant feces and fungus spores, and strands of fungus eventually grow on the decomposing pulp. This fungus is the crop that these ants eat; the ants do not eat the leaves. read more

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