The millions of species of insects that live on earth today play a vital role in the ecosystem of our planet. Although most of them are safe, some can cause a lot of trouble for a person, and some can be poisonous and even deadly. From familiar ants and flies to more exotic beetles, here's a list of 25 of the most dangerous insects in the world.
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1. Termites
Termites do not pose a direct danger to humans, they play important role For environment Moreover, in some cultures they are even eaten. But at the same time, baby termites can cause enormous damage to infrastructure, sometimes making houses completely uninhabitable.
3. Black-legged tick
Every year, the black-legged tick infects thousands of people with Lyme disease, which starts with a rash around the bite that looks like a bull's eye. Early symptoms of this disease include headache and fever. With the further development of the disease, the victim begins to suffer from problems with the cardiovascular system. Few die from these bites, but the effects can continue for years after the unpleasant encounter with the tick.
4. Army ants
The first creature on our list that is dangerous in the literal sense of the word are roaming ants, known for their predatory aggression. Unlike other ant species, roamers do not build their own permanent nests. Instead, they create colonies that migrate from one place to another. These predators constantly move during the day, preying on insects and small vertebrates. In fact, the entire combined colony can kill more than half a million insects and small animals in one day.
Most wasps pose no particular direct danger, but certain varieties, such as the German wasp North America, reach large sizes and can be incredibly aggressive. If they sense danger or notice an intrusion into their territory, they can sting repeatedly and very painfully. They will mark their aggressors and in some cases pursue them.
6. Black Widow
Although the sting of a female black widow spider can be very dangerous to humans due to the neurotoxins released during the bite, if the necessary medical care, then the consequences of the bite will be limited to only some pain. Unfortunately, isolated cases of death from the bite of a black widow still occurred.
7. Hairy Caterpillar
Caterpillars of the Megalopyge opercularis coquette moth look cute and fluffy, but don't be fooled by their cartoony appearance: they are extremely venomous.
Usually people believe that the hairs themselves are burning, but in reality the poison is released through the spikes hidden in this "wool". The spines are extremely brittle and remain in the skin after being touched. The poison causes a burning sensation around the affected area, headache, dizziness, vomiting, sharp pains in the abdomen, damage to the lymph nodes, and sometimes respiratory arrest.
8. Cockroaches
The cockroach is known as a carrier of many diseases that are dangerous to humans. The main danger of living together with cockroaches is that they climb into toilet bowls, garbage cans and other places where bacteria accumulate, and as a result, they are their carriers. Cockroaches can cause a variety of diseases, from worms and dysentery to tuberculosis and typhoid. Cockroaches can carry fungi, single-celled organisms, bacteria, and viruses. And here's a fun fact - they can live for months without food or water.
10. Bed bugs
A person does not directly feel the bite itself, since the composition of the saliva of the bug includes an anesthetic substance. If the bug could not get close to the blood capillary the first time, it can bite a person several times. At the site of a bug bite, severe itching begins, and a blister may also appear. Occasionally, people experience a severe allergic reaction to a bug bite. Fortunately, 70 percent of people feel almost no effects from them.
Bedbugs are household insects and do not belong to the group of vectors infectious diseases However, in their body they can retain pathogens that transmit infections through the blood for a long time, for example, viral hepatitis B, and pathogens of plague, tularemia, and Q-fever can also persist. The greatest harm they deliver to people with their bites, depriving a person of normal rest and sleep, which can subsequently adversely affect moral health and performance.
11. Human gadfly
12. Centipede
The centipede (Scutigera coleoptrata) is an insect that is also called the flycatcher and is thought to have originated in the Mediterranean. Although other sources speak of Mexico. The centipede has become very common throughout the world. Although the appearance of such insects is unattractive, they generally do a useful job, as they eat other pests and even spiders. True, with entomophobia (fear of insects), such an argument will not help. Usually people kill them because of unpleasant appearance, although centipedes are even protected in some southern countries.
The flycatcher is a predator, they inject the victim with poison and then kill it. Often flycatchers settle in apartments without harming food or furniture. They love moisture, often centipedes can be found in basements, under baths, in toilets. Flycatchers live from 3 to 7 years, newborns have only 4 pairs of legs, increasing them by one with each new molt.
Usually the bite of such an insect is not disturbing for a person, although it can be compared with a small bee sting. For some, it can even be painful, but usually it is limited to tears. Of course, centipedes are not insects that are responsible for thousands of deaths, but many of us would be surprised to learn that someone dies from these stings every year. The fact is that an allergic reaction to insect venom is possible, but this still happens extremely rarely.
13. Black Scorpion
Although scorpions do not belong to insects, as they belong to the order of arthropods from the class of arachnids, we nevertheless included them in this list, especially since black scorpions are the most dangerous species of scorpions. Most of them live in South Africa, especially often they can be found in desert areas. Black scorpions are distinguished from other species by their thick tails and thin legs. Black scorpions sting, injecting their prey with poison that can cause pain, paralysis and even death.
14. Predator
15. Bullet Ant
Paraponera clavata is a species of large tropical ants from the genus Paraponera Smith and the subfamily Paraponerinae (Formicidae), which have a strong sting. This ant is called a bullet for the reason that the bite victims compare it to a shot from a pistol.
A person bitten by such an ant may feel throbbing and relentless pain for days after the bite. In some local Indian tribes (Satere-Mawe, Maue, Brazil), these ants are used in very painful rites of initiation of boys to adulthood (which leads to temporary paralysis and even blackening of the stung fingers). During the study chemical composition poison, a paralyzing neurotoxin (peptide) called poneratoxin was isolated from it.
16 Brazilian Wandering Spider
Also known as Phoneutria, Brazilian wandering spiders are venomous creatures that live in tropical South America and Central America. In the 2010 Guinness Book of Records, this type of spider was named the most venomous spider in the world.
The venom of this genus contains a powerful neurotoxin known as PhTx3. At lethal concentrations, this neurotoxin causes loss of muscle control and breathing problems, leading to paralysis and eventually suffocation. A bite of moderate pain, poison causes instant infection of the lymphatic system, entering the bloodstream in 85% of cases leads to heart failure. Patients feel wild stiffness during life, men sometimes experience priapism. There is an antidote that is on par with antibiotics, but because of the severity of the harm to the body of the poison, the detox procedure is actually equal to the chance of survival of the victim.
17. Malarial mosquito
18. Rat fleas
19. African honey bee
African bees (also known as killer bees) are the descendants of bees brought from Africa to Brazil in the 1950s in an attempt to improve honey production in that country. Some African queens have begun to interbreed with native European bees. The resulting hybrids moved north and are still found in Southern California.
African bees look the same and in most cases behave like the European bees that currently live in the United States. They can only be detected by DNA analysis. Their stings also do not differ from the sting of an ordinary bee. One very important difference between the two varieties is the defensive behavior of the African bees when defending their nest. In some attacks in South America, African bees have killed livestock and people. This behavior has earned the AMPs the nickname "killer bees".
In addition, this type of bee is known for acting like an invader. Their swarms attack the hives of the common honey bee, invading them and installing their queen. They attack in large colonies and are ready to destroy anyone who encroaches on their uterus.
Although the flea is not usually perceived as dangerous, fleas transmit numerous diseases between animals and humans. Throughout history, they have contributed to the spread of many diseases, such as the bubonic plague.
21. Fire Ants
Fire ants are several related ants from the Solenopsis saevissima species-group of the Solenopsis genus, which have a strong sting and poison, whose effect is similar to a flame burn (hence their name). More often under this name appears the invasive red fire ant, which has spread throughout the world. There are known cases of human sting by one ant with serious consequences, anaphylactic shock, up to death.
22. Brown recluse
The second spider on our list, the brown recluse, doesn't release neurotoxins like the black widow. Its bite destroys tissue and can cause lesions that take months to heal.
The bite very often goes unnoticed, but in most cases the sensations are similar to those of a needle prick. Then within 2-8 hours the pain makes itself felt. Further, the situation develops depending on the amount of poison that has entered the bloodstream. The venom of the brown recluse spider is hemolytic, which means it causes necrosis and tissue destruction. A bite for young children, the elderly and sick people can be fatal.
23. Siafu Ants
Siafu (Dorylus) - These army ants are mainly found in East and Central Africa, but have also been found already in tropical Asia. Insects live in colonies that can number up to 20 million individuals, all of which are blind. They make their travels with the help of pheromones. The colony has no permanent place residence, moving from place to place. In the course of movement to feed the larvae, insects attack all invertebrates.
Among these ants there is a special group - soldiers. It is they who can sting, for which they use their hook-shaped jaws, and the size of such individuals reaches 13 mm. The jaws of the soldiers are so strong that in some places in Africa they are even used to secure the seams. The wound may be closed for as long as 4 days. Usually, after a Siafu bite, the consequences are minimal, you don’t even need to call a doctor. However, it is believed that young and old people are especially sensitive to the bites of such ants, and deaths from complications after contact have been observed. As a result, annually, according to statistics, from 20 to 50 people die from these insects. This is facilitated by their aggressiveness, especially when protecting their colony, which a person can accidentally attack.
24. Giant Asian Shemale
Many of us have seen bumblebees - they seem to be quite small, and there is little reason to be afraid of them. Now imagine a bumblebee that has grown up as if on steroids, or just look at the Asian giant. These hornets are the largest in the world - their length can reach 5 cm, and their wingspan is 7.5 centimeters. The length of the sting in such insects can be up to 6 mm, but neither a bee nor a wasp can compare with such a bite, and bumblebees can also sting repeatedly. Such dangerous insects cannot be found in Europe or the USA, but when traveling through East Asia and the mountains of Japan, you can meet them. To understand the consequences of a bite, it is enough to listen to eyewitnesses. They compare the sensation of a bumblebee's sting to a red-hot nail driven into the foot.
Poison sting has 8 various compounds, which cause discomfort, damaging soft tissues and creating a scent that can attract new bumblebees to prey. People who are allergic to bees can die from the reaction, but there are cases of death due to the poison mandorotoxin, which can be dangerous if it gets deep enough into the body. It is believed that about 70 people die from such bites every year. Curiously, the sting is not the main hunting tool of bumblebees - they crush their enemies with large jaws.
25. Tsetse fly
The tsetse fly lives in tropical and subtropical Africa, having chosen the Kalahari and Sahara deserts. Flies are carriers of trypanosomiasis, which cause sleeping sickness in animals and humans. Tsetse are anatomically very similar to their ordinary relatives - they can be distinguished by a proboscis on the front of the head and a special manner of folding wings. It is the proboscis that allows you to get the main food - the blood of wild African mammals. On this mainland, there are 21 species of such flies, which can reach a length of 9 to 14 mm.
You should not consider flies so harmless to humans, because they really kill people, doing it quite often. It is believed that in Africa up to 500 thousand people are infected with sleeping sickness, carried by this particular insect. The disease disrupts the activity of the endocrine and cardiac systems. Then amazed nervous system causing mental confusion and sleep disturbance. Attacks of fatigue are replaced by hyperactivity.
The last major epidemic was recorded in Uganda in 2008, in general, the disease is on the list of forgotten in WHO. However, in Uganda alone, 200,000 people have died from sleeping sickness in the last 6 years. It is believed that this disease is largely to blame for the deterioration of the economic situation in Africa. It is curious that flies attack any warm object, even a car, but they do not attack a zebra, considering it only a flash of stripes. Tsetse flies have also saved Africa from soil erosion and overgrazing caused by cattle.
Man came up with different methods control of these insects. In the 1930s, all wild pigs were destroyed on the west coast, but this gave a result only for 20 years. Now they fight by shooting wild animals, cutting down bushes and treating male flies with radiation in order to deprive them of the opportunity to reproduce.
There are not so many ants dangerous to humans in the world. But, as with other animals, human fear has really big eyes: frightening stories about killer ants have become real legends among those who like to tickle their nerves on the couch under the covers.
Nevertheless, dangerous ants really exist. In strict scientific language, they, of course, are not called "killer ants", biologists call them differently:
- army ants from both the Black Continent and South America
- the so-called bullet ant, the soreness of the bite of which exceeds that of a moderate chemical burn
- Australian bulldog ants, whose bite can be fatal to a sensitive person
- fiery, so named precisely for its ability to sting very painfully.
On a note
For individuals with a very severe allergic reaction to insect stings, each of the above ants can be a killer. Moreover, isolated cases of suffocation and fatal intoxication of a person from the bite of just one ordinary red ant are known! Of course, these are exceptional incidents, and because of them it is incorrect to call all ants deadly dangerous.
about the types that knowledgeable people really afraid, we should talk in more detail.
Army ants (siafu)
“Every living thing that got in the way of the column or in the zone where the soldiers entered was immediately destroyed. With powerful curved jaws, the soldiers grabbed beetles, caterpillars, spiders, worms, other ants, larvae, wood lice, tore them up and carried them into the column. If a larger prey came across - a lizard, a snake, a mouse or a bird that could not fly, the ants piled on in a black moving mass, and very soon the animal ceased to exist ...
... The ants have passed, leaving only the bones of the rats trying to escape and the chickens forgotten in the barn ... "
A. Tambiev, Living Ways of the Planet
The specificity of these ants lies in the fact that they do not have an anthill, but they breed in temporary bivouacs formed by the worker ants themselves, grabbing each other with their jaws. Such a bivouac has the shape of a ball and seems completely chaotic, but in fact a clear order reigns in it. For part of their life, a colony of such ants wanders in search of food, for which they got their name.
Soldier ants of all types of nomadic ants look intimidating: their jaws are larger than the head itself, and the insects themselves are very large - an ant-soldier has up to one and a half centimeters in length. But the female of the African nomadic ants is really huge: with a body length of up to 5 cm in the oviposition phase, she is the largest of the currently known ants.
This is interesting
Female army ants also set another kind of record: during breeding seasons, they can lay up to 130,000 eggs daily. Such fertility is not observed in any other insect.
African killer ants are actually not. The danger of army ants is generally greatly exaggerated. Their bites are indeed extremely painful and can cause severe allergic reactions. Getting into the center of such a colony can lead to serious bites.
However, there are no known cases of human deaths from army ants. Moreover, the basis of the diet of these ants are other insects, and only very few a large number of small vertebrates die from them - lizards, frogs, chicks of birds.
This is interesting
The biology of some birds is closely related to the life of African nomadic ants (another name is siafu). For example, the diet of the ocellated ant is more than half composed of insects frightened away by a moving colony of these ants. No wonder that most During their life, these birds accompany nomadic ant colonies as food sources.
Stray killer ants are nothing more than a figment of the rich imagination of the authors of adventure stories (Russians are no less bloodthirsty and also actively destroy other insects of comparable size), and stories about devastated villages and skeletons gnawed in a matter of seconds are nothing more than literary thickening of colors.
Interesting video: African killer ants attack a male of their own species
These ants got their name for the terrible pain from bites: their venom contains one of the most powerful toxins in the insect world - poneratoxin. acute pain after a bite of an ant, at least 24 hours are felt, for which this species has also received the name "ant 24 hours".
Video example: Bullet ant worker catching a grasshopper
On the special Schmidt pain scale, the pain from stings from these ants reaches the highest level of fourth and exceeds that from burns and bites from any other insects.
The bullet ant is one of the largest ants in general: the length of the working individual is 2-2.5 cm, the female is up to 3 cm.
They live in South America, and among some Indian tribes they are used for a terrible ritual of initiation of a man: a sleeve with live ants tied to it is put on the boy's arm.
After such a test, the hands may be paralyzed for several days, lose sensation and turn black.
Interesting video: killer ants in the ritual of initiation of the tester into men
Black bulldog ants
These ants are quite large, but if not for their bites, they would hardly have become particularly famous. According to statistics, in Tasmania they die from their bites every year. more people than from attacks by sharks, poisonous spiders and snakes combined.
The bite of a black bulldog ant causes an acute allergic reaction in humans - more than 3% of those bitten were in a state of anaphylactic shock.
At the same time, it is never possible to predict in advance how the body will react to the bite of this insect: the active substances in it differ from those of other related insects - wasps and bees - and even a person who normally reacts to bee stings can become a victim of these ants.
It is noteworthy that bulldog ants are evolutionarily very primitive. Perhaps this is due to their strong toxicity.
Fire Red Ant
Fire ants are considered the most dangerous ants in general. And not so much because of the strong poison and extremely painful bite, but because of its ability to take root in new conditions, quickly spread around the world and disrupt the stability of many biocenoses.
The original homeland of fire ants is Brazil, but on merchant ships these insects successfully moved to the south of the USA, to Australia and China. Today, they are also diligently fought in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Taiwan, but so far success is on the side of the ants.
When bitten, a fire ant injects poison into the wound with the toxin solenopsin contained in it. According to the Schmidt scale, the pain from the bites of a red fire ant is the same as the pain from a fire burn, which was the reason for the name of the insect. Around the world, several thousand people are bitten by these insects every year and several deaths from anaphylactic shock: almost all those bitten have an acute allergic reaction.
Suffer from the bites of these insects and animals, both domestic and wild. It is estimated that fire ants cause $5 billion in annual damage to the US budget, including medical and veterinary care costs.
This is interesting
The red fire ant is considered one of the most dangerous invasive insects in the world: it takes root in most places that it enters with a person, and due to its aggressive behavior, it strongly affects the structure of biological populations in places of introduction.
It should be remembered that all ants, regardless of the degree of danger to humans, are necessary for the biocenosis in which they originally live in nature. Almost all ants are excellent fighters against plant pests, and the same stray ants also very effectively clear their paths of movement from any dying and sick animals. Therefore, the concepts of "dangerous" and "harmful" should not be confused, and even especially scary insect should be treated as important participants in interrelated processes in nature.
An interesting video: a spider against a large ant - who wins? ..
Nomadic ants, regularly migrating in millions of colonies, live in the tropical zone of Africa, Asia and America. Insects do not build permanent nests; their settled phase of life lasts no more than 2-3 weeks. They move during the day, for an overnight stay they arrange a bivouac from their own bodies, in the center of which is the uterus. The horde, passing 1-3 km, does not leave anything alive behind. Powerful mandibles butcher not only insects, but small mammals and birds. Stray ants are called killers, often exaggerating their danger.
Description
Several related groups of true ants share a similar lifestyle, called the nomad ant syndrome. Their characteristic feature is regular migrations. Numerous colonies of insects, reaching several million, move within 1-2 weeks. With them they carry eggs, larvae, the queen. Nomadic individuals do not build anthills, clinging bodies, they arrange a nest for numerous family members and a queen.
Nomad ants
adult
The body of an adult ant consists of three sections: head, thorax (mesosoma) and abdomen. The stalk connecting the thoracic segments and the abdomen is called the petiole. The chitinous exoskeleton protects and supports the body of the insect. On the head of the ant are antennae, consisting of 8-10 segments. These are the sense organs that capture vibrations, chemical odors.
Interesting fact. Most wandering ants do not have organs of vision or they are greatly reduced. Blind insects navigate in space with the help of antennae. They communicate with each other by secreting pheromones.
The upper jaws of mandible ants differ in size, but are always well developed. In working individuals, they are designed to carry eggs and larvae, food. For soldiers, this is a powerful weapon. Strong mandibles help tear apart enemies. Insects have 3 pairs of legs, on the legs there are claws that help move along a vertical surface. The abdomen of some species ends in a sting.
Interesting fact. Soldier ants of the genus Dorylus do not open their closed jaws even after death.
Communication system
There are 75 glands in the body of an ant, they secrete various substances, including pheromones and repellents. Nomadic species have dozens of special signal odors produced in various situations. With the help of pheromones, scouts indicate the direction of movement of the entire column, report the location of the prey.
Ant hierarchy
The family of nomad ants consists of hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals. All of them obey a strict hierarchy and act as a single harmonious organism. The basis of a large colony is made up of worker ants. These are infertile females. Specialized groups are formed from them: workers, foragers, scouts, soldiers. Males are several times larger than representatives of the working caste. The main figure of the family is the queen. She is the only female involved in the birth of new members of the colony. The life of a queen is 15-20 years.
A significant part of the family is the brood - eggs, larvae, pupae. The workers take care of it. In the family, responsibilities are clearly divided, each insect is busy with its own work. A highly organized colony is able to build bridges and nests from the bodies of ants, resist enemies, and hunt.
Classification
There are three subfamilies of tropical nomad ants in the world. The main classification occurs according to the habitat:
- Aenictus are small to medium sized insects found in Asia, Australia and Africa. Working individuals are yellow-brown in color, their body length does not exceed 3.5 mm. Males and females of the genus are much larger, reaching 25 mm. Differences are also manifested in the anatomical structure - in worker ants, the stalk between the chest and abdomen consists of two segments, in males and females of one. The subfamily united about 180 species.
- Dorylinae - the main regions of habitat - tropical Asia and Africa. large group includes 800 species. The most famous genus is Dorylus. Depending on the hierarchy, ants vary considerably in size. Workers 3 mm, soldiers 13 mm, males 30 mm, females up to 50 mm. The number of individuals in one migrating colony is about 20 million.
- Ecitoninae - insects are found in the New World in the United States, the southern boundary of the habitat is Argentina and Chile. American predators spend the bulk of their lives traveling and hunting. During migration, places in the column are clearly distributed. Worker ants move in the middle and carry offspring. The soldiers on the sides protect their relatives from the attack of enemies. Coloration of adults from brown to black.
Lifestyle
Nomadic ant syndrome manifests itself in the behavior and reproduction of insects. Its signs:
- collective foraging;
- construction of temporary nest bivouacs;
- regular change of phases of settlement and migration;
- subordination of the reproductive cycle to the schedule of movement of the colony.
With the onset of dusk, the construction of the bivouac begins. A temporary nest in the form of a ball of the bodies of workers is built in a secluded place. The queen and offspring are placed inside. The bivouac has several entrances. The bivouac is about 1 meter in diameter and requires 500-700 thousand ants to build. African siafu ants dig nests in soft ground. Blind diggers quickly prepare a shelter for a huge family of up to 20 million individuals. Their distinguishing feature is the absence of a sting. It is replaced by powerful mandibles, painful bites cause inconvenience even to elephants. Jaws easily cut the covers of insects and animals, tear off pieces of flesh from them.
Nomad ants at any age eat exclusively meat food. For small larvae hunters get spiders, caterpillars, beetles, locusts, scorpions. Birds that build nests on the ground, small vertebrates (lizards, snakes, rodents) become victims of predators. The colony cleans the found corpses of large animals, leaving behind only bones.
Reproduction features
The reproductive function of the colony is entrusted to the queen's uterus. Tropical nomad ants have one queen, other species may have several. A large winged female mates with a male during the first flight. For the rest of her life, she uses up the stored sperm. An adult fertilized queen sheds her wings. She is always under the protection of worker ants. During movement, the cylindrical elongated abdomen of the female is slender. When hundreds of thousands of eggs ripen, it swells. By the beginning of the stationary phase, the larvae turn into cocoons and do not require food. All meat obtained by hunters is given to the queen.
Ants belong to Hymenoptera insects with complete transformation. This means that their life begins with the egg phase, then the larva appears. Ants turn into adults after pupation. The formation of eggs begins during the period of settled life. The fecundity of the female is 200-300 thousand pieces. The embryonic period lasts up to three weeks. By the time of the new migration, larvae appear from the eggs.
This process is also synchronized with the development of pupae; adults appear from the cocoons of the previous clutch. To feed the larvae, the colony sets off. By the time of their pupation, the column finds a place to stay.
Once a year, the queen makes a special clutch, from which reproductive females and males emerge. With age, they leave the family and form their own colonies.
Benefit and danger to humans
The beneficial actions of stray insects do not exclude danger to humans. Once on the path of the colony, a person runs the risk of being bitten by hundreds of individuals. Army ants do not bite prey immediately. They crawl under clothes in large numbers and act on a signal. For people prone to allergies, such an attack ends in anaphylactic shock. Attacks on humans and animals are rare. The main prey of ants is other insects. Tropical wandering ants clear the forests of animal corpses, destroy sick and weak individuals.
Associated with small insects who spends his whole life in hard work. In most cases, they are harmless. The only danger they pose is damage to the crop or a slight redness at the bite site, which quickly passes. But in the world there are also very dangerous representatives of this species. Killer ants are able to attack people and sting ruthlessly, putting dangerous poisons under the skin.
This type of insect is typical for tropical and subtropical latitudes, where the climate is warm and humid. The largest populations are found in Africa, the species lives in Central and Southern parts of Asia. They are also called wandering ants or siafu army ants. These are large individuals, whose body length is about 1.5 cm.
They got their name because of their characteristic way of life. Army ants do not build a stationary anthill. They are constantly changing their habitat.
Interesting!
The colony walks about 1 km daily. They move in a broad column, which gradually tapers towards the tail. Its width can reach 15 m, and length up to 45 m.
Ants nomads strictly adhere to a certain order during the procession. The edges of the column are guarded by soldier ants, closer to the middle, working individuals move, which carry food and future offspring.
The homeland of the species is South America, distributed over much larger territories and can be found in the USA and Mexico. Individuals have small size which do not exceed 6 mm. African killer ants have excellent adaptive abilities, so their distribution area is constantly increasing.
Looking at the photo of this species, attention is immediately focused on a powerful sting, which has some resemblance to a similar organ of a scorpion. They also have rather large chewing jaws, which play not only a defensive role, but also as a way to transfer food particles.
Poison ants are recognized as the most great view among relatives.
- The body length of a worker ant is 2-2.5 m. Their female grows up to 3 cm.
- The predominant habitat is South America.
- has a black-brown color.
- characteristic feature is the presence of a powerful sting, inside of which a large amount of dangerous poison is concentrated.
This species does not like to roam and prefers to equip anthills in the depths of the soil. There is enough moisture for them to produce offspring. A characteristic feature of the anthill is the simplicity of design. Wasps and spiders are used as food, as well as plant and fruit juices.
Interesting!
The bulldog ant uterus can penetrate other people's anthills and kill the true queen. After that, a new queen remains in the colony. Working individuals begin to serve her.
Bulldogs live only in the wild and are not inclined to occupy human dwellings. Once near the anthill, a person should immediately leave this place. The guards of the nest instantly give a command, and almost the entire colony goes into battle. The bites of this species are considered the most dangerous in the world. They can lead to severe anaphylactic shock, and in more severe cases, even death.
Thus, it is quite difficult to assess the danger of a bite from each species. This is due to the characteristics of the body and its resistance. In the habitats of dangerous individuals, warning and education of local residents about possible dangers and precautions is always carried out.
