Are There Any Types Of Ants That Can Devour Large Animals, or Crops?
Most of us have seen movies that depict some types of exotic ants as voracious consumers of human flesh. This may seem exaggerated, but who knows? The world is full of dangerous tiny insects. All you have to do is spend some time outdoors in order to see how large ant colonies can become. Given the large size of ant colonies, some ants could potentially eat a human being or another large animal, right? Some of you may have sustained injuries caused by fire-ants. It may not be hard to imagine a colossal amount of fire-ants taking down a small animal, but this is not possible. There may not be any ants that can eat the flesh from a human body, but there must certainly be some ants that are regarded as crop-pests. Well, according to the experts, ants cannot devour a human body. However, there are still a few types of ants that are quite ferocious. Some ants you will want to avoid.
Some sources claim that ants can strip a dead deer of all its flesh within ten minutes, leaving nothing behind but a deer skeleton. There does not exist any types of ants that consume food this efficiently. An animal that is as large as a deer would take days for ants to consume. To give you some perspective, fire-ants can strip a frog to its bare bones in twelve hours.
When it comes to voracious ants, most people are thinking of army ants. The term “army ants” refers to ants that swarm, as opposed to ants that build nests. There are many different species of army ants living all over the world. Perhaps the most ferocious of these army ants is the African species known as Dorylus, more commonly referred to as driver ants. Although these ants are aggressive, they are certainly not as horrific as the ants we encounter in fictional works. However, these ants have been known to feed on certain crops, mostly potato crops. But driver ants typically limit themselves to a diet of insects.
Have you always assumed that a type of “killer ant” existed in nature?