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A lone ant summits a fallen blue floor beetle (Carabus intricatus), lifting a limb as if waving a victory flag over its unlucky sufferer. German photographer Ingo Arndt captured this triumphant scene to doc the chaotic expertise that’s feeding time for a colony of wooden ants (Formica polyctena).

Ants of the Formica group primarily dwell in Europe and are identified for his or her voracious appetites and talent to scavenge prey a lot bigger than themselves. Although these ants are outfitted with sizeable mandibles and might spray formic acid from their abdomens, their true predator’s benefit lies of their sheer carrying capability: Wooden ants can carry prey and different objects as much as 50 occasions their very own weight, typically throughout foraging trails dozens of ft from their house nests.

In Body Image
Photograph by Ingo Arndt

And they’re even stronger en masse. Wooden ants desire to type colonies of a whole bunch of 1000’s of people, lots of whom dwell inside large mounds constructed of natural materials discovered on woodland forest flooring. These nests function the nursing grounds for egg-bearing queens and feminine employee ants, whereas bigger teams of males mobilize exterior of the nest to forage for meals and take down unsuspecting prey.

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Scientists have noticed curious “farming” habits in these industrious ants, whose major food regimen consists of honeydew, the sugary substance produced by sap-eating aphids. Formica ants are inclined to their aphids as in the event that they have been livestock, defending the smaller bugs and their host vegetation from predators in trade for the aphid’s secreted honeydew. This mutualistic relationship permits the hard-working Formica colonies to hold as a lot as 2,000 kilos of aphid secretions again to their colonies a yr.

Arndt, whose picture gained the invertebrate habits class of the Wildlife Photographer of the Yr competitors, says that this colony swarmed throughout his physique mere minutes after he laid down close to the nest. But the wooden ants swiftly redirected their consideration to their prey, carving the beetle with spectacular effectivity.



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