Giant slayers

July 25, 2011 at 7:02 pm (wildlife) (, , , , )

Saw some awesomely scary ant action at the weekend.  When I arrived, this worm was still wriggling:

Before...

When we returned from our walk, this is what remained:

and after.

Very clearly, these ants have swarmed the worm when it was stranded on the paving and attacked it so ferociously that it could not escape.  They seem to have sucked out all the juices leaving a dry husk.  As I watched, I could not see the ants that left the worm taking anything away – it must have all been stored inside their bodies.

I don’t really know anything about what sort of ant these are, and whether they always feed like this, but it was a rare treat to see such a coordinated assault on a creature hundreds of times their size.  I’m really very glad that there are no ants close to 100th the size of me – though I’d still take these guys over Army Ants..

PS Apologies for the poor quality phone pics, we forgot to take our real camera out this weekend.

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