eli5 How does Queen Ants get so big? Do they just live longer? Is it that royalty bloodline? She just eat a lot more?
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It’s largely hormone driven. Not quite eli5 but a good analogy is puberty. Each ant in the colony goes through a different type of puberty depending on a combination of genetics and environmental influences from the needs of the hive to the location and timing of their puberty.
Just like different versions of puberty allow some humans to start ovulating and others to start producing sperm, some versions of ant puberty allow some to turn into queens which changes their whole physiology just like it does for us.
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