Forget the lions, tigers and bears. When it comes to the art of war, armed ants are among the scariest creatures on earth. With powerful mouthparts, these fighters can deftly cut creatures much larger than themselves into pieces. Acting together in large numbers, armed ant colonies manage to carry out tens of thousands of such deaths every day. However, its capabilities have limits. Contrary to popular belief, they almost never knock down large animals or people.
One of the best places to see armed ants is Barro Colorado, an island in a lake created by the Panama Canal. The island is home to up to 50 colonies of Eciton burchellii, the most studied military ant in the world. It is one of the 150 types of armed ants of the New World; more than 170 other types live in Asia, Africa and Australia.
The colonies of this military ant are huge, ranging from 300,000 to 700,000 ants. They never stay in one place for long, moving from one nest site to another. Joining their legs, they use their own bodies to form huge nests called bivouacs, which hang under a fallen tree. They remain there for about 20 days while the queen lays up to 300,000 eggs.
When the ants go hunting, up to 200,000 of them leave the nest in a group that widens into a fan up to 14 meters wide. This swarm raid takes a slightly different course each day, allowing hunters to cover new ground each time.
Protecting the ants wherever they go are the soldiers, recognizable by their huge jaws. If their terrifying stares don’t scare enemies, the soldiers also have a powerful bite, and the attack is usually suicidal. Because their jaws are hook-shaped, soldiers cannot pull them out again. Amazonian tribes have used soldier ants to close wounds, breaking up bodies and leaving heads in place.
Eciton burchellii are blind and cannot see what lies ahead, but they move together in such large numbers that they easily kill ants, insects, and other small non-military creatures.
In Japanese, the word ant is written by joining two characters: one that means “insect” and the other that means “loyalty.” In fact, individual ants are completely loyal to their fellow ants. They show many examples of selfless cooperation that, while certainly extreme, cannot fail to earn human admiration.