The SIAFU Guidebook

34 The SIAFU Network Guidebook

an enormous abdomen. She can be up to 5 cm long. Males are winged and are about 3 cm long.

Driver ants are found throughout the forests of West Africa and the Congo. They inhabit rainforest and savannah, and these ants feed on any animal life in their path! They hunt by swarming. They will dismember up to 100,000 prey animals in a single raid. Colonies of driver ants can number up to 22 million. Almost daily, swarms embark on raids for food which can be brought back to the nest. Although totally blind, driver ants have no problems getting around. They rely on touch, smell and chemical signals from the abdomen of the leading ants. The swarms can travel at up to 20 meters per hour, stripping all animal life in their path. They are also known to raid the nests of other social insects, although never those of other driver ants. They do not rely on stings to attack; rather they use their large and powerful mandibles to create puncture wounds and tear off sections. Driver ants have a larger impact on their habitat than any other creature and they have to move location at regular intervals to find new feeding grounds. During their nomadic existence they form temporary nests called ‘bivouacs’ made from the living members of the colony, in which they house the developing grubs. Whenever the ants swarm or migrate, they form large highways of workers, bordered by the soldiers, which hang over the action, their mandibles waving, to protect the colony as it moves. All of the ants in the colony are female. However, only one of them, the queen, is responsible for breeding. She lays 1-2 million eggs every month, almost continuously. She gets sperm from the bizarre male driver ant – a large winged insect known as the sausage fly. It measures about 3 cm in length, and flies from one colony to another in order to stumble upon an ant highway. Once it does, its wings are removed and it is taken back to the nest where it is used as a sperm donor. The queen driver ant is the largest ant in the world. ~ BBC’s Science and Nature http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/3086.shtml