how are ants’ mouths big enough to hurt when they bite you?
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Most ants aren’t large enough that their jaws (called mandibles) could penetrate the outer dead layer of skin, and thus cause pain.
However the majority of ant species are armed with venom to one degree or another. Many, but not all of those have an egg-laying structure called an ovipositor, that is modified into a stinger. These can be quite long with respect to the size of their abdomen. So pain your referring to is probably a result of venom produced prom their stings, and not their bites.
Ants produce a wide variety of compounds in their venoms and this is a subject of a great deal of scientific research.
For example, Wood Ants in the genus *Formica* produce large amounts of Formic acid, named after this genus. These are somewhat large as far as ants go. Instead of stingers these ants are strong enough to spray tiny streams of this acid, potentially blinding or burning the lungs of animals that attack the nest.
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