Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1892 — DRIVER ANTS IN AFRICA. [ARTICLE]

DRIVER ANTS IN AFRICA.

Gluttonous I.title Pests Which Are the Terror of Everybody. “The most terrible of insects are the ‘driver’ ants of West Africa,” said an entomologist to a Washington Star writer. “They are so called because they drive before them while on march all other living .creatures, no animal being able to withstand them. No beast, however formidable, dares to cross their track, and they will destroy in a single night ail the pigs and fowls on a farm. The huge iguana lizards fall victims to them, as do snakes and all other reptiles. It is said that they begin their attack on the snake by biting its eyes and so blinding the prey, which, instead of running away, writhes helplessly in one spot. Natives of Africa assert that when the great python has crushed its captive in its folds it does not devour it at once, but makes a circuit of at least a mile in diameter in order to see whether an army ot driver ants is on the march in the neighborhQod. If so it glides off and abandons its prey, which will soon be eaten by the ants.

“If an army of these ants approaches a village the entire population is compelled to fly. Sometimes the people may be obliged to take to the water in order to save themselves. The insects travel in the night and on cloudy days, because they are quickly killed by the direct rays of the sun. Should the sun come out while they are making a journey they construct a continuous arch over their path *ut of earth agglutinated by a fluid excreted from their mouths. In cloudy weather an arch for the protection of the marching workers is constructed of the bodies of the larger soldier ants, whose widely extended jaws, long legs and projecting antennie intertwining, form a sort of net work. In case of an alarm the arch is instantly broken and the insects which composed it join other soldiers on the flanks of the line, who seem to be acting as scouts, running about furiously in pursuit of the enemy. The alarm over, the arch is renewed and the column proceeds as before.”