Direction: A passage is given with 5 questions following it. Read the passage carefully and choose thebest answer to each question out of the four alternatives.
PASSAGE
Ants have been living on the earth for more than 100 million years and can be found almost anywhere on the planet. It is estimated that there are about 20000 different species of ants. For this reason ants have been called Earth’s most successful species. If you watch ants for any length of time you will see that they really do communicate with each other and very effectively too. Ants communicate by touching each other with their antennae. Ants also use chemicals called pheromones to leave scent trails for other ants to follow. Ants build many different types of homes. Many ants build simple little mounds out of dirt or sand. Other ants use small sticks mixed with dirt and sand to make a stronger mound that offers protection from rain. Western Harvester ants make a small mound on top, but then tunnels up to 15 feet straight down to hibernate during winter. Ant mounds consist of many chambers connected by tunnels. Different chambers are used for nurseries, food storage, and resting places for the worker ants. Some ants live in wood like termites. Army ants don’t make a home at all but travel in large groups searching for food. Ants are social insects which means they live in large colonies or groups. Some colonies consist of millions of ants. There are three types of ants in each species, the queen, the sterile female workers and males. The male ants only serve one purpose, to mate with future queen ants and do not live very long. The queen grows to adulthood, mates, and then spends rest of her life laying eggs. A colony may have only one queen, or there may be many queens depending on the species. Ants go through four stages of development: egg, larva, pupa and adult.
MEANINGS OF DIFFICULT WORDS/PHRASES
(1) mounds (N.) : a small natural hill
(2) hibernate (V.) : sleep during winter