how are ants’ mouths big enough to hurt when they bite you?
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They have extremely powerful mandibles, that can pinch and break skin. A lot of ants have what is essentially incorporated latches connecting their muscles, allowing them to store a much higher amount of potential energy, than what the muscles could handle alone. Like *Odontomachus bauri* a species of trap jaw ant, can close their mandibles at up to 230km/h, with an order of force 300x the ant’s weight, it’s so powerful that they can catapult themselves away from predators.
As well as just being able to bite you many ants have bonus weapons. Some have stingers on their thorax to inject venom, like bull ants, fire ants and bullet ants, bullet ants being notably excruciatingly painful. Other ants, like wood ants, create formic acid in their thorax which they can use to spray potential threats as a massive group. The formic acid isn’t too bad for mammals, as it’s primary use tends to be to dissolve the inside of other athropods, after breaking open their exoskeleton with bites, during hunting efforts. But none the less would make your eyes and sinuses pretty uncomfortable, and would burn any open wounds or bites.
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