Safari ant
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Safari ants are a type of driver or army ant living in central and east Africa, of the genus Dorylus and the family Formicidae and the order Hymenoptera. Unlike most colonial hymenopterans with three classes, safari ants have four. To the normal queen, workers, and males (or drones) is added a soldier class, which is larger, with a very large head and pincer-like mandibles.
Commonly believed to not form anthills, they actually do, and each colony can contain up to 20 million individuals. Seasonally, when food supplies become short, they leave the hill and form marching columns which are considered a menace to humans. Their bite is severely painful, each soldier leaving two puncture wounds when removed. Removal is difficult, however, as their jaws are extremely strong, and one can pull a soldier ant in two without it releasing its hold. Large numbers of ants can kill small or immobilized animals and eat the flesh. A large part of their diet is earthworms.
In mating season alates (winged queens and drones) are formed. The drones are larger than the soldiers and the queens are much larger. They mate on the wing, and the queens go off to establish new colonies. Workers and soldiers are sexually undeveloped (or non-reproducing) females.
Safari ants are a favorite food of chimpanzees and gorillas. Chimps have learned how to catch and consume them without suffering many bites; they insert a stick into the anthill, onto which the ants climb. They then remove the ants from the stick by hand and eat them rapidly. This use of a tool by chimps has been studied extensively in recent times, as it was previously thought that tool use was strictly a human province.
Such is the strength of the ant's jaws, in East Africa they are used as natural, emergency stitches. Maasai moroni, when they suffer a gash in the bush, will use the soldiers to stitch the wound, by getting the ants to bite on both sides of the gash, then breaking off the body. This seal can hold for days at a time.
[edit] Species
- D. zimmermanni (Santschi)
- D. kohli (Wasmann),
- D. lamottei (Bernard)
- D. wilverthi (Emery)
- D. nigricans (Illiger)
and others
