Word.ws English Dictionary

turtle ant

turtle ant noun: any of the tree-dwelling ants of the tribe Cephalotini (genera Cephalotes and Procryptocerus).

turtle ant: any of the tree-dwelling ants of the tribe Cephalotini (genera Cephalotes and Procryptocerus)
Image: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

turtle ant (plural turtle ants)

  1. Any of the tree-dwelling ants of the tribe Cephalotini (genera Cephalotes and Procryptocerus).
    • The species he concentrated on was Cephalotes atratus, a slate-black “turtle ant” with a flattened body. High-speed videos proved that when dislodged from a tree, a turtle ant stretches out her body and limbs and aligns herself with respect to the ground so that she doesn't turn head over heels.2010, Mark W. Moffett, Adventures among Ants: A Global Safari with a Cast of Trillions, University of California Press, page 137
    • The crab spider of South America feeds mostly on turtle ants.2016, Mark E. Lasbury, The Realization of Star Trek Technologies, Springer, page 38

Forms of turtle ant

pluralturtle ants

Questions about turtle ant

What does turtle ant mean?
Turtle ant means any of the tree-dwelling ants of the tribe Cephalotini (genera Cephalotes and Procryptocerus).
What part of speech is turtle ant?
Turtle ant is a noun.
What is the plural of turtle ant?
The plural of turtle ant is turtle ants.

Words near turtle ant in the dictionary

  1. turtan
  2. turtans
  3. turtanu
  4. turtanus
  5. turtle
  6. turtle ant
  7. turtle ants
  8. turtle bean
  9. turtle crab
  10. turtle crawl
  11. turtle crawls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: turtle ant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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