These Ants Can Consume Up to 500,000 Prey Per Day

There’s safety, even power, in numbers. One creature’s confrontation with the world seems insurmountable, almost impossible, but an army of those little creatures can move mountains. And no creature exemplifies the power of collective will quite like the army ant.

The term army ants, however, is not specific to one type of ant. It applies to over 200 ant species with remarkably different lineages. Instead, it speaks to their behavior. They move and keep moving, as a rule, and as a unit. This results in some spectacular displays of fortitude and teamwork. As such, let’s learn more about army ants, and how they work as a unit to take on formidable foes like wasps.

Army Ant Characteristics

As previously mentioned, army ants come from hundreds of different ant species. While they all belong to the true ant family Formicidae, many types of army ants have evolved similar behavior and purpose independently. This may be a type of convergent evolution. On the whole, however, these ants are defined by their wanderlust. They do not construct permanent nests. Instead, the colonies move together, forage together, and protect highly specialized queens.

While they don’t build permanent nests, they erect something like a living nest called a bivouac as they move. In places like hollowed-out trees and dirt burrows, army ants build a living, breathing ball out of each other’s bodies. To the untrained eye, these bivouacs look chaotic, but they are highly organized. Even a slight disturbance summons ants to the bivouac surface, ready to defend the colony with sharp mandibles and even stingers. Within a day, the colony has moved, erecting more bivouacs wherever they go.

Army ant colonies consist of workers, soldiers, males, and a queen. Whereas other ant species send out a recon unit to find food sources, army ants prefer a blitz-like strategy; they send out large, leaderless groups to overwhelm prey. Like troops appearing on the horizon ready to run through an exposed village, army ants can effectively consume up to 500,000 prey per day. As such, nothing is sacred. Army ants eat almost anything in their path. If food seems scarce, they will raid the nests of creatures, even dangerous ones like wasps.

The Marabunta March

This YouTube video shows a colony of army ants almost defying physics by building a bridge from a structure to a wasp nest. While most army ants prefer to eat ground-level anthropods like bugs and beetles, colony robbers like those in the video risk it all for invasions.

Using an incredibly complicated tapestry of pheromones, these ants build living roads up to and over 330 feet long. This subtle but organized gradient of pheromones tells the ants where to go, where not to go, and what their purpose should be. This makes for a remarkably effective organizational tool. That teamwork, combined with army ants’ preternatural aggression, scares away even the toughest adversary.

In this YouTube video, the ants construct a pheromone road from a structure to a wasp nest to steal nutritious wasp larvae. Wasps, which are normally aggressive when it comes to defending their nest, stand no chance. They can inflict some damage but not enough to stop the rising tide of incoming army ants. By the end of the video, the ants appear to have conquered the wasp nest. That’s because even the most defensive wasps will abandon their nests when faced with this type of onslaught. They know it’s better to save their population than defend one nest.

There are many formidable foes in the natural world, but none come close to the army ant. Through collective will and ferocity, army ants can bowl over just about anything or anyone in their path. Army ants are also known as marabunta, which is Spanish slang for a group of rowdy and tumultuous people. It’s a fitting name for a mob of army ants marching your way.