To find out how much each ant weighs, we can start by determining the total weight that the ants are carrying and then figure out the weight of each individual ant.
We know that:
- There are 32 ants carrying a cherry that weighs 4800 milligrams.
To find the weight that each ant is carrying, we divide the total weight of the cherry by the number of ants:
\[ \text{Weight per ant} = \frac{\text{Total weight of the cherry}}{\text{Number of ants}} = \frac{4800 \text{ mg}}{32} \]
Calculating that gives:
\[ \text{Weight per ant} = 150 \text{ mg} \]
This means each ant is carrying 150 milligrams.
Since we know that some ant species can carry 50 times their body weight, we can set up the following equation where \( w \) is the weight of each ant:
\[ 50w = 150 \text{ mg} \]
Now, we can solve for \( w \):
\[ w = \frac{150 \text{ mg}}{50} = 3 \text{ mg} \]
Thus, each ant weighs approximately 3 milligrams.