Consider the gargantuan insect at the heart of this BBC clip, an African Dorylus queen: She’s a strange beast. All army ant queens are.
Posts on ‘February 10th, 2011’
Ouch?
It’s hard to look at Eciton soldiers and not wonder what’s up with those evil tusks. So here it is: those hooked jaws are designed to inflict pain on vertebrates. I don’t post this for shock value but as a statement of fact. The ant uses them to snare offending animals and anchor herself to [...]
How to Photograph Army Ants
The frenetic action of the army ant lifestyle invites spectacular photography. There’s the rush of the raid, the evisceration of prey, the bravado of flanking soldiers, and the entourage of flies, beetles, and antbirds. But shooting these subjects- here I refer explicitly to Eciton- is different than general insect photography. The problems are four-fold:
What’s Wrong With This Picture?
This Taxonomy Fail you can buy from Amazon for only $1.39. It’s not an army ant, of course. The eyes are far too large, and the antennae too thin and fragile. But what is it?
A personal weblog by Illinois-based biologist and photographer Alex Wild.
