From a distance, and ant does not look like much more than a black speck crawling across the pavement. But if you take that same ant and look at it under a microscope, an incredible amount of detail is revealed. Taxonomists have created over 150 unique terms to describe the microsculpturing patterns of insects, but the function of these textures remains a mystery. Here we present a simplified classification system of insect cuticle patterns, which we then use to classify 11,739 ant species and subspecies. We will discuss the evolution and diversity of cuticle sculpturing in ants as well as potential functions related to abrasion resistance.