“…and today we’re talking about a small soldier. But more on that later.”
When you’re out in the wilds of the African bushland, you need to get creative when it comes to emergency wound care. One species of ant has a bite so powerful, it can be used to stave off infection. The true villain of Indiana Jones 4, the driver ant is truly a mini muncher with mighty medicinal mandibles. But having the jaws of life permanently attached to your face is a great way to survive as an ant here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.
Description of the Driver Ant
- The driver ant is a brown ant with a head that is wider than its body.
- They are brown to auburn.
- They have small tufts of blond hairs.
- Queens are larger, thicker of body, and winged.
Measure Up
Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We don’t have a measure up intro, so we’ll look back in the archives for our greatest hits.
Worker length
- 8mm
- How many driver ant workers go into the length of the largest cereal box?
- Hint: The box was a Poppins flakes box that was made by the Daher International Food Company in Lebanon. The record for the largest cereal breakfast was also broken at the same event in 2016.
- 402.5 ants. The box was 3.22 m (10 ft 6.77 in) tall.
Head width
- 3.92 mm
- How many driver ant heads go into the width of a queen size bed?
- Hint: A queen size bed is 80 inches long, the same length of a king.
- 390 ant heads. A queen is 60 inches wide.
Fast Facts about the Driver Ant
The driver ant lives in West Africa and prefers humid habitats with vegetation and soft soil.
Driver ants go on raids, where they will swarm an area and take out any insects or arthropods in their path. The specific gribodoi species is thought to primarily, if not exclusively, eat earthworms. Though that may not be true considering the breadth of diversity in other driver ant diets.
Driver ants often conduct raids by forming lines that bring food too and from the nests. Workers collect the food and soldier ants protect them by forming a defensive tunnel around the trail. Soldier ants are blind but they detect vibrations in the ground and air.
When a threat enters the area, pheromones are released that raise an alert among the whole raiding party. Soldiers direct their jaws outward defensively.
If they are on a raid and come across another ant colony, they will go to war. Ants, in general, conduct major wars all over the world and compete for territory under our feet.
In their territory, they often live in human villages. They have many embellished legends about them, like attacking children in their bed. They can bite through human skin, which can be painful, but bites are usually superficial.
However, the presence of a driver ant colony means fewer dangerous pests like scorpions, or crop eating pests.
Farmers often attract driver ants, because they unearth grubs and worms when tilling the soil.
Mistaking human villages for hairer primates would be a huge mistake for driver ants. Chimpanzees like to snack on them by dipping a stick into a nest and eating the ants off the stick.
Major Fact: Snitches are Stitches
- Driver ants have an insanely powerful bite for their size
- Justin Schmidt,who created the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, studied the driver ant’s use in East African tribes
- Among other groups, the Massai tribe uses the driver ant as natures suture if they’re wounded
- If someone gets a gash out in the wild, you need to keep that wound shut otherwise it will likely get infected. Best case scenario is that it takes forever to heal and scars horribly.
- Without access to stitches or a normal suture, the Massai have an ingenious way of closing their wounds
- They will grab a major driver ant by its head and hold its jaws on either side of the wound
- The ant will naturally bite down, piercing the skin and holding the two sides shut.
- The ant’s body is then cut off so the head is left locked in place
- Do this along the length of the cut and you’ve got yourself a medeival torture method that stops infection and helps you heal.
- This suture can last for days thanks to the strength of the ant’s bite. Once the heads start to fall off, you just reapply more ants until the wound is healed.
Ending: So get together with a few thousand of your old army buddies, open your mandibles, and let the healing begin like the driver ant here in LDT.