The Codex is the colony's field journal: a page of real facts for every card you own. Each grade unlocks another line, and each page has quiz questions that pay Royal Jelly when answered right. A daily question also pays Royal Jelly.
Every page
| Card | Quick fact |
|---|---|
| Founding Queen | A queen can live for decades and lays every egg in the colony. |
| Worker | Every worker ant is female. |
| Brood: egg, larva, pupa | Ants grow in four stages: egg, larva, pupa and adult. |
| Antzi the Iceman | Antzi the Iceman is a pun on Ötzi, a 5,300-year-old man found frozen in the Alps. |
| Funnel ant | Funnel ants dig nests with funnel-shaped entrances in sandy soil. |
| Black garden ant | The black garden ant is one of the most common ants in Europe. |
| Meat ant | Meat ants build big gravel-covered mounds, with tens of thousands of ants in a single nest. |
| Aphid herd | Some ants 'milk' aphids for a sugary liquid called honeydew. |
| Coastal brown ant | The coastal brown ant has big-headed soldiers called majors. |
| Honeypot ant | Some honeypot workers become living food stores, called repletes. |
| Green-head ant | Green-head ants shine metallic green and purple in the sun. |
| Jack jumper ant | Jack jumpers really do jump, and have a powerful sting. |
| Leafcutter ant | Leafcutter ants grow a fungus garden and eat the fungus, not the leaves. |
| Harvester ant | Harvester ants collect and store seeds in underground granaries. |
| Weaver ant | Weaver ants sew leaves together with silk from their own larvae. |
| Antistotle | Antistotle is a pun on Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher. |
| Socrantes | Socrantes is a pun on Socrates, who taught by asking questions. |
| Ladybird | Ladybirds are beetles that eat aphids, so ants often chase them off. |
| Stone Golem ant | A myth ant made of living stone, from the colony's oldest stories. |
| Bottle-cap Altar | A bottle cap the child dropped into the farm, now the colony's first altar. |
| Army ant | Army ants have no permanent nest; they camp in living 'bivouacs' made of their own bodies. |
| Trap-jaw ant | Trap-jaw ants snap their jaws shut faster than almost anything in nature. |
| Carpenter ant | Carpenter ants tunnel through wood but don't eat it. |
| Fire ant | Fire ants survive floods by linking their bodies into floating rafts. |
| Joan of Ant | Joan of Ant is a pun on Joan of Arc, the French heroine. |
| Alexanter the Great | Alexanter the Great is a pun on Alexander the Great of Macedon. |
| Huntsman spider | Huntsman spiders are big, fast and mostly harmless to people. |
| Minotaur ant | A myth ant with a bull's head that guards the deepest tunnels. |
| Bullet ant | The bullet ant has the most painful insect sting on the Schmidt pain index. |
| Argentine ant | Argentine ants form supercolonies of connected nests that don't fight each other. |
| Pharaoh ant | Pharaoh ants are tiny house pests that spread by 'budding'. |
| Isaac Newtant | Isaac Newtant is a pun on Isaac Newton. |
| Johantes Kepler | Johantes Kepler is a pun on Johannes Kepler. |
| Cockroach | Cockroaches are tough survivors, and close relatives of termites. |
| Metal Golem ant | A myth ant of paperclips and staples, born when the colony first smelted metal. |
| Pencil Sharpener | The child's pencil sharpener became the colony's first 'engine'. |
| Yellow crazy ant | Yellow crazy ants run in fast, jerky, 'crazy' paths. |
| Odorous house ant | Odorous house ants smell like rotten coconut when squashed. |
| Ghost ant | Ghost ants are so pale they almost vanish against a white bench. |
| Nicolant Tesla | Nicolant Tesla is a pun on Nikola Tesla, the inventor. |
| Alexander Grahant Bell | Alexander Grahant Bell is a pun on Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor. |
| House mouse | House mice raid pantries, and to an ant colony a mouse is a giant. |
| Hydrant | A myth ant with many heads, named after the Hydra of Greek legend. |
| Garbage Bin | A household bin, a renewable feast that refills every week. |
| Bulldog ant | Bulldog ants are big, bold bull ants with a strong sting. |
| Amazon ant | Amazon ants raid other colonies' pupae and raise them as their workers. |
| Weaver ant major | Weaver ant majors are the big workers that guard leaf nests. |
| Marie Curie-pillar | Marie Curie-pillar is a pun on Marie Curie. |
| Professor Relativant | Professor Relativant is a fictional ant physicist who loves relativity, the theory Albert Einstein developed in the early 1900s. |
| Robant Oppenheimer | Robant Oppenheimer is a pun on J. Robert Oppenheimer. |
| Praying mantis | Praying mantises hunt by ambush, striking with spiked front legs. |
| Radiation Golem ant | A glowing myth ant born from a leaking battery in the garden shed. |
| MutANT | MutANTs change every day; nobody knows what tomorrow's will do. |
| Turtle ant | Turtle ants can glide, steering their fall when they drop from trees. |
| Saharan silver ant | Saharan silver ants survive some of the hottest ground temperatures of any animal. |
| Dracula ant | Dracula ants have the fastest-moving animal body part ever recorded: their snapping jaws. |
| Alant Turing | Alant Turing is a pun on Alan Turing, a founder of computer science. |
| Leonardo Fibonantcci | Leonardo Fibonantcci is a pun on Leonardo Fibonacci. |
| Alan Wahants | Alan Wahants is a pun on Alan Watts, a writer on philosophy. |
| Drone bee | Drone bees are male honey bees; they don't sting and don't collect food. |
| Phoenix ant | A myth ant that rises again from its own ashes. |
| Wifi Router | The house's wifi router, which the colony learns to 'talk' to. |
| Pavement ant | Pavement ants were among the ants studied on the International Space Station in 2014. |
| Desert navigator ant | Desert ants find home by counting steps and reading the sun. |
| Professor Blackhole | Professor Blackhole is a fictional ant cosmologist fascinated by black holes, inspired by the work of Stephen Hawking. |
| Carl Sagant | Carl Sagant is a pun on Carl Sagan, the astronomer. |
| Commander Moonstep | Commander Moonstep is a fictional ant astronaut who celebrates the first Moon landing, when Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the Moon. |
| Water bear | Water bears (tardigrades) can survive drying out, freezing and even open space. |
| Griffin ant | A myth ant with the wings of an eagle and the body of a lion. |
| Alien beetle | An alien beetle met at first contact; its home world is unknown. |
| Hive Ship | A hive ship carries a whole colony to a new world. |
| Dinosaur ant | The dinosaur ant is one of the most primitive-looking ants alive, and it lives in Australia. |
| Transcendant ant | The Transcendant ant is what the colony becomes when every mind joins as one. |
| The Great Ant | The Great Ant is the god of the colony, honoured at the Chapel. |
| Satant | Satant is the colony's trickster, offering strong deals with a catch. |
| Dragon ant | A myth ant with dragon wings and a burning bite. |
| Entropy | Entropy is a measure of disorder, and in the game it's the final swarm. |
| The Colonizer | The Colonizer: the child who collected a queen from the garden, and grew up with her colony. |
| The First Worker | The First Worker: the very first daughter the queen raised. |
| Sphecomyrma (amber) | Sphecomyrma was the first ant from the age of the dinosaurs ever described, found in amber in New Jersey. |
| Hell ant (amber) | Hell ants were Cretaceous ants with jaws that swung upwards, unlike any living ant. |
| Titanomyrma (fossil) | Titanomyrma was a giant ant whose queens had wingspans of about 16 cm. |
| Prionomyrmex (amber) | Prionomyrmex is an ancient ant from Baltic amber, a cousin of Australia's dinosaur ant. |
| Amber queen | A queen ant trapped in amber, older than any colony alive. |
| Mosquito larva | Mosquito larvae live in water and breathe through a tube at the surface. |
| Water strider | Water striders walk on water using tiny water-repelling hairs. |
| Diving beetle | Diving beetles carry a bubble of air under their wing cases to breathe underwater. |
| Dragonfly nymph | Dragonfly nymphs live underwater for months, and shoot out a jaw to grab prey. |
| Comet krill | Comet krill are made-up creatures the ants catch in comet tails (real krill live in Earth's oceans). |
| Banded sugar ant | Banded sugar ants are big, friendly-looking ants that come out at night. |
| Mangrove ant | The mangrove ant can swim, which is rare for an ant. |
| Spider ant | Spider ants have long legs and gangly bodies that look spidery. |
| Red wood ant | Red wood ants build huge mounds of pine needles in European forests. |
| Marauder ant | Marauder ants have workers in a huge range of sizes, from tiny minors to giant supermajors. |
| Yellow meadow ant | Yellow meadow ants build grassy mounds that can last for decades. |
| Little black ant | Little black ants are about one and a half millimetres long. |
| Thief ant | Thief ants tunnel into bigger ants' nests and steal their food and young. |
| Acrobat ant | Acrobat ants raise their heart-shaped abdomen over their head when alarmed. |
| Citronella ant | Citronella ants smell of lemons when crushed. |
| Silky ant | Silky ants are the colonies slave-making ants most often raid. |
| Tawny crazy ant | Tawny crazy ants coat themselves in their own acid to survive fire ant venom. |
| Blood-red ant | Blood-red ants raid other Formica nests and carry off their pupae. |
| Inchman | The inchman is a bull ant about an inch long, with a painful sting. |
| Golden-tailed spiny ant | Golden-tailed spiny ants have a gaster covered in shining golden hairs. |
| Black-headed sugar ant | Black-headed sugar ants forage at night for honeydew and nectar. |
| Rock ant | Rock ants teach each other the way to new nests by tandem running. |
| European fire ant | The European fire ant is a red ant that stings, and it has spread to North America. |
| Red harvester ant | Red harvester ants clear a bare disc of ground around their nest and store seeds inside. |
| Longhorn crazy ant | Longhorn crazy ants have very long antennae and legs and run in erratic dashes. |
| Little fire ant | The little fire ant is tiny, slow and has a sting far bigger than its size. |
| Exploding ant | Exploding ants burst open to cover attackers in sticky, toxic goo. |
| Acacia ant | Acacia ants live inside the hollow thorns of bullhorn acacia trees and defend them. |
| Azteca ant | Azteca ants live inside Cecropia trees and guard them from leaf-eaters. |
| Indian jumping ant | Indian jumping ants leap after prey, and workers can become egg-layers when the queen dies. |
| American honeypot ant | Some American honeypot ants hang from the ceiling as living jars of nectar. |
| Matabele ant | Matabele ants carry injured nestmates home after termite raids and treat their wounds. |
| Asian needle ant | Asian needle ants hunt termites and have a sharp, needle-like sting. |
| Red honey ant | Melophorus bagoti forages in the midday heat of the central Australian desert. |
| Driver ant | A driver ant colony can hold more than ten million ants. |
| Giant forest ant | The giant forest ant is one of the largest ants in the world. |
| Jet ant | Jet ants build nests from chewed wood glued with honeydew and strengthened by a fungus. |
| Clonal raider ant | Clonal raider ants have no queens: every worker lays eggs that hatch into copies of itself. |
| Hokkaido wood ant | A supercolony of this ant on Hokkaido's coast spans tens of thousands of linked nests. |
| Big-eyed jumping ant | Gigantiops has some of the biggest eyes of any ant and jumps to escape danger. |
| Tiny trap-jaw ant | Tiny Strumigenys ants snap their spring-loaded jaws shut on springtails. |
| Door-head ant | Door-head ants plug the nest entrance with their flat, round heads. |
| Antlion | Antlion larvae dig cone-shaped pits in sand and wait for ants to slip in. |
| Ant cricket | Ant crickets are tiny wingless crickets that live inside ant nests. |
| Ant-nest silverfish | This silverfish lives in ant nests and snatches drops of food as ants pass it between them. |
| Mealybug | Mealybugs make sweet honeydew, and ants protect them to collect it. |
| Ant-mimic spider | Ant-mimic jumping spiders wave their front legs like antennae to look like ants. |
| Treehopper | Treehoppers trade sugary honeydew to ants for protection. |
| Ant-nest hoverfly | Microdon hoverfly larvae live inside ant nests and eat the ants' brood. |
| Velvet ant | Velvet ants aren't ants at all: they're wingless wasps with a very painful sting. |
| Ant-nest rove beetle | Some rove beetles fool ants with chemical signals and get fed inside their nests. |
| Lacewing larva | Lacewing larvae hunt aphids, and some disguise themselves with debris to sneak past ants. |
| Ant-corpse assassin bug | Some assassin bugs stack dead ants on their backs as a disguise. |
| Large blue butterfly | Large blue caterpillars trick red ants into carrying them home, then eat the ants' brood. |
| Phorid fly | Phorid flies lay eggs on fire ants; the larva grows inside and the ant's head falls off. |
| Ant plant | Ant plants grow swollen tubers full of tunnels that ants move into. |
| Wattle seed | Many wattle seeds carry a fatty tag that ants eat, so ants plant the seeds for them. |
| Zombie-ant fungus | This fungus makes infected carpenter ants climb a plant and bite a leaf before they die. |
| Green woodpecker | Green woodpeckers feed mostly on ants, lapping them up with a long sticky tongue. |
| Ant-eating spider | Zodarion spiders hunt only ants, biting and then waiting for the venom to work. |
| Short-beaked echidna | Echidnas eat ants and termites and are one of the few mammals that lay eggs. |
| Thorny devil | Thorny devils eat thousands of small ants a day, one at a time. |
| Horned lizard | Horned lizards eat harvester ants, and some can squirt blood from their eyes. |
| Antbird | Some antbirds follow army ant raids to catch insects fleeing the swarm. |
| Aardvark | Aardvarks dig open ant and termite nests at night with powerful claws. |
| Giant anteater | A giant anteater's tongue is about 60 cm long and flicks in and out over a hundred times a minute. |
| Pangolin | Pangolins are covered in keratin scales and curl into a ball when threatened. |
| Termite | Termites look like ants but are more closely related to cockroaches. |
| Root aphid | Some ants keep root aphids in their nests and carry them to fresh roots. |
| Star visitor | The star visitor is a character from the game's story, not a real animal. |
Field notes are reviewed regularly. Spot something wrong? Tell us.