Ants bullet

The bullet ant is large enough, and its bite in pain is similar to a bullet wound. The arthropod stings much more painfully than any other insect. And although the bite for the human body is not fatal, but it brings terrible torment throughout the day.

Appearance and habitat

All bullet ants have the same color - black-brown, and family members are not particularly different from each other:

• foragers are the smallest, their length reaches 2.5 centimeters;
• females grow up to 3 centimeters.

Photo ant bullets show that queen of ant similar to other individuals, but has a more rounded abdomen.

The eggs of Paraponera Clavata (paraponer) resemble rice in shape and are distinguished by a pale yellow color.

On a note!

Each individual has a long sting and a large head with powerful mandibles. Ant's feet and the body is covered with light spikes, similar to thin needles.

You can meet bullet ants in the territory from Nicaragua to Paraguay. In tropical forests, they are found in the roots of trees and less often on the trunks themselves. On average, four ant colonies inhabit one hectare of forest.

Lifestyle

Bullet ants prefer to live in tropical rainforests where they can hunt other arthropods and collect sweet nectar from flowers. Insects can’t tolerate neighbors, therefore they fight with them for food and territory.

Anthills they dig deep, up to 65 centimeters, with complex moves. But the way out and the entrance to the ant housing is one. The "door" is guarded by two guards. In case of danger, other ants crawl out of the nest and begin to conduct a survey of the territory.

Interesting!

Each house is equipped with a drainage system. This is a long channel that goes down from the nest.

In the family, roles are distributed depending on the size of the individual:

• the smallest workers look after the larvae;
• large males of a bullet get food and guard the nest.

Small colonies. Usually there are no more than a thousand ants in a family. Period breeding ants accounts for December-January. At this time, females and males fly out of the nest for mating.

The bullet protects the tree from attack leaf cutters where it lives. He does not allow these ants to harm the plant.

Nutrition

The bullet ant is a predator. It feeds on other arthropods and small animals, killing them with a poisonous bite.

Food searches are carried out at night. Ants are 40 meters away from the anthill. They find their way home thanks to marks made with glands near their paws.

On a note!

They prefer foraging on trees, but they can conduct searches on the ground.

The food found may be a thousand times larger than the ant itself. Insects combine and cut the prey into small parts to deliver it to the anthill.

The main nutrition of bul ants includes:

• large arthropods;
• vertebrates small animals;
• sweet nectar and wood juice.

To extract wood juice, insects make serifs on the bark with their sharp mandibles. They drink the liquid themselves and carry it to the nest to feed their brothers, larvae and the queen.

Interesting!

About 45% of foragers bring food to the anthill. The rest come back with nothing. Ants laden with food run faster than those who go empty-handed.

Bullets can carry in the anthill and plant food, which includes moss, petals, small twigs.

Bite and poison

The bullet ant is a peace-loving insect.He uses his sting for hunting, and tries to scare off the enemy. For this, the paraponer emits an unpleasant odor and hisses eerily. Stinging arthropod only if the enemy continues the offensive.

On a note!

The Schmidt scale, which determines the amount of pain, gives the bite a status of 4+, for which representatives of this family are considered killer ants. Bites of other insects have a status of 1 to 4.

The sting of an arthropod of impressive length is 3.5 mm, the capsule with poison is 1.9 mm. The toxic substance contains ponerotoxin, which causes discomfort in a bitten person or animal.

Ant bite bullets cause burning pain and paralysis. The place where the sting stuck may turn black.

Satere-Mawe tribes use bullet ants for a tough rite. Sleepy insects are woven into mittens that are worn on the boy’s hands. Ten minutes later, the instrument of torture is removed. Hands of a young man turn black and stop moving, and deafening pain lasts a day.

Only the life of allergy sufferers is threatened. For other people, it does not pose mortal danger.