White Ants: What They Are and How to Spot Them
White ants are termites. The name is wrong, but it has stuck for well over a century, and it is still what most people call them. Benefit Pest Management identifies and treats termites right across the Hunter. This page covers what they look like, how to tell them from real ants, and where to go from there. Our head technician holds licence 5083379.
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The insect people call a white ant. Pale workers and the darker winged alates, on one of our jobs.
White ants are termites
There is no such creature as a white ant. The insect people find under a skirting board and call a white ant is a termite. Both names describe exactly the same insect.
The irritation is practical rather than pedantic. The name sends people down the wrong path. Somebody who thinks they have ants buys an ant product, sprays it around the skirting, watches the visible insects die, and concludes the problem is handled. Meanwhile the colony reroutes and keeps eating.
Termites are not ants. Closer to the opposite, in fact. They belong to a different order of insect entirely. The biology is not the same. Neither is the behaviour, and neither is the fix.
So the name matters. Not because anybody should feel silly for using it, but because it is the first thing that leads people to the wrong fix.
White ants are termites. And I hate it when people call them white. It's my pet peeve.
Pest Management Technician
What white ants look like
Most people never see one. Workers avoid light completely, so they stay inside the timber they are eating or inside the mud tubes they build to travel.
Workers
The ones you would find if you broke open damaged timber. Roughly 3mm to 5mm long, soft-bodied, and a creamy white or translucent colour that is exactly where the name came from. They have no functional eyes.
Soldiers
The same size with a noticeably larger, darker, harder head and obvious jaws. Their job is defending the tubes.
Alates
The flying ones look different again. Darker brown, and winged. This is the only stage most people ever see in the open. They emerge in warm humid weather, fly a short distance, drop their wings and try to start a new colony.
Those shed wings are worth knowing about. A small pile on a windowsill or in a spider web is often the first hard evidence a property owner gets.
How to tell them from actual ants
Side by side the two are not difficult to separate, once you know which three things to look at.
Not to scale, and simplified. The waist is the quickest test.
Termite: broad, no pinch between thorax and abdomen. Ant: sharply pinched, an obvious narrow waist.
Termite: straight, like a string of tiny beads. Ant: bent, with a clear elbow in the middle.
Termite: four wings, all the same length. Ant: front pair noticeably longer than the back pair.
| Termite ("white ant") | Ant | |
|---|---|---|
| Waist | Broad. No pinch between thorax and abdomen | Sharply pinched, an obvious narrow waist |
| Antennae | Straight, like a string of tiny beads | Bent, with a clear elbow in the middle |
| Colour and body | Creamy, translucent, soft | Brown or black, hard-shelled |
| Wings, on the flying stage | Four wings, all the same length | Front pair noticeably longer than the back pair |
| Behaviour | Hides. Stays inside timber or mud tubes | Forages in the open, in visible trails |
The waist is the quickest test. An ant has a proper wasp waist you can see without magnification. A termite runs straight through from front to back.
Behaviour is the other giveaway. Ants march across your bench in plain sight. Termites will not come out at all, so an insect on open ground in daylight is almost certainly an ant.
Their closest relative is the cockroach
This one surprises people, and it is genuinely true. The closest relative to a termite is not an ant. It is a cockroach.
Termites sit inside Blattodea, the same order as cockroaches. They were once classified separately, which is part of why the confusion lasted so long, but the genetics settled it. The nearest living relatives are wood-eating cockroaches. A termite is essentially a social cockroach that has specialised in eating timber.
That is not a piece of trivia, either. It explains the behaviour better than the ant comparison ever did. Termites want what cockroaches want: damp, dark, hidden, undisturbed.
Look for them where you would expect a cockroach problem rather than where you would expect an ant trail, and you look in the right places.
Who is related to whom
Simplified. The point is which branch termites sit on, and it is not the ants’.
Where you'd find them around a house
Six spots account for most of what we find.
The subfloor
On piers and bearers, usually with mud tubes running up
Wet areas
So under and behind bathrooms, laundries and kitchens
Skirtings, architraves and door frames
Where tapping sounds hollow
The roof void
Often reached through a wall cavity from below
Fence posts, sleepers, stumps and stored timber
Including firewood stacked against the wall
Tree bases within about 100 metres
Which is frequently where the nest actually is
Mud tubes are the clearest outdoor sign.
Pencil-width, the colour of dried mud, running up brickwork or a pier. Those are shelter tubes, built because the insects will not cross open air.
What to do if you think you've got white ants
Three things, in this order.
Leave it alone.
Do not break the timber open to get a better look, and do not spray it. Disturbing an active area makes the colony abandon that route and move somewhere else in the building, which makes the problem harder to locate and harder to treat than it was five minutes earlier.
Take a photo.
Of the insect, the mud tube, the damaged timber, whatever you can get without disturbing anything. Send it through and we will tell you whether you are looking at termites, ants or borers.
Book an inspection.
A photo tells us what the insect is. It cannot tell us how far it has gone or where the nest sits, and that needs somebody in the subfloor and the roof void. Full detail on termite inspections, and the options once we know what is active are on termite control.
Why the name won't die
Early European settlers in Australia found a pale, social insect living in large colonies in the ground, and called it a white ant. That was a reasonable guess at the time. It was also wrong, and it has outlived every attempt to correct it.
Two things kept it alive. The insects genuinely do look like pale ants to an untrained eye. On top of that, they were formally classified in their own separate order for most of the twentieth century, which made the ant comparison seem like the sensible shorthand.
By now it is embedded in Australian usage. Builders say it. Plumbers say it. Real estate agents say it. Thousands of people a month still type it into Google.
So we answer to it, because that is the word people actually use when they ring. Our reports say termites.
We answer to the other name, because it is the word people use when they ring.
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Straight answers
Common questions about white ants
Are white ants a real species?
No. There is no insect called a white ant. It describes termites, and every Australian species people mean when they say it is a termite.
Are white ants dangerous to people or pets?
No. They do not bite, sting or carry disease, and soldiers cannot do anything meaningful to a human. The danger is entirely structural, which is also why the damage runs so long before anybody notices.
Do white ants only eat timber?
Mostly, but not only. They are after cellulose, so paper, cardboard, some insulation backing and stored books are all fair game. Boxes stored in a damp subfloor are a common find.
I have found little piles of what looks like sawdust. Is that white ants?
Probably not. Termites do not leave sawdust, because they eat the timber rather than boring through and ejecting it. Fine powder or small pellets usually points to borer beetles, covered on borers and timber beetles.
Do white ants fly?
Only one stage does. The reproductive alates fly in warm humid weather to start new colonies, then shed their wings. Workers and soldiers never fly, so flying insects around a light and shed wings on a sill are the same event.
Can I get rid of white ants with ant spray?
No, and it usually makes things worse. Ant products are built for a different insect and only reach what you can see, so the colony seals off that route and carries on somewhere else in the house. The visible insects dying is not the problem being solved.
The easiest question we answer all week
Send us a photo
Found something and not sure what it is? That is the easiest question we answer all week, and it costs you nothing.
Insect, mud tube or damaged timber, whatever you can get at without disturbing it.
If it turns out to be termites, we will talk you through what happens next.
Close enough to see the beaded antennae and the wings all one length. A photo like this is all we need.