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| Bullet Ant. |
Faster than a speeding bullet ant?
Since when do you consider an insect a piece of shrapnel? Ever since explorers ran into this one-and-a-half inch ant packed full of venom.
"Its sting feels like a bullet," one of the students assures me. "I have seen men who think they are very tough get stung by them and they are screaming and crying."
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Ant milking the sugar waste
from aphids. |
Yet another reason to tote the suction-based snake-bite kits with you into the field.
Gone a-milking
These little red spots clinging to the stem of this plant are aphids. They suck the sap from the plant searching for vitamins and minerals. There is way too much sugar in the sap, so they excrete the extra. This ant is "milking" the sugar waste from
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Ants using spines of tree for
protection. |
the hind end of the aphids. Talk about a recycling program!
Armored ants
These innovative ants can use the spines of this sapling to protect them as they build their nest and forage for food.
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