[btilly]

He's at school so I can't just ask him.

But if it comes to ants, I'm willing to bet money that he knows it.

I remember being at a bug fair with him a few years back. There was a grad student with a display including some fossilized ants. My son came over, looked, identified the genus, began pointing out the identifying characteristics and named multiple related current species. The grad student's jaw dropped open. The only things that the grad student knew which my son didn't was how old the fossil was and where it was found.

And here is some fun trivia. If you look, between the thorax (where the legs grow) and the gaster (the bulb at the end), there is a very, very skinny petiole. The only food that can pass through that and keep the ant alive is high energy fluid. So a major problem for every species of ant is how to turn the world around into such a fluid so that they can eat it.