In East Africa Safari Ants Are Used As What

Safari ants are the Western world’s largest ants. They are used among some tribes in East Africa as disposable surgical staples. By placing them on living prey, the ants close their jaws and burrow into them, creating a wound through which enough poison is engorged to be fatal. It takes anywhere from 16 to 20 minutes for the prey to die, thus allowing for an easy harvest of meat and poison, both of which are valued by these tribes.

In East Africa Safari Ants Are Used As What

There are over 100 species of army ants in the Old World, with approximately equal numbers in the genera Aenictus and Dorylus. The latter group is by far the better-known.

Known as “driver ants” or “safari ants,” members of the genus Dorylus are found primarily in central and east Africa, though the range extends to tropical Asia. There are some 70 species presently recognized, though another 60 names are applied at the rank of subspecies. Unlike the New World members of the Ecitoninae, they do form anthills, although these are temporary (lasting anywhere from few days up to three months). Each colony can contain over 20 million individuals. As in their New World counterparts, there is a soldier class among the workers, which is larger, with a very large head and pincer-like mandibles. They are capable of stinging, but very rarely do so, relying instead on their powerful shearing jaws. All Dorylus species are blind, though they, like most varieties of ants, communicate primarily through pheromones.

Seasonally, when food supplies become short, they leave the hill and form marching columns of 20 million ants. They can be considered a menace to people, though they can be easily avoided; a column can only travel about 20 meters in an hour (Youth 2007). It is for those unable to move, or when the columns pass through homes, that there is some risk of injury or asphyxiation, although generally only to the young, infirm, or otherwise debilitated. Their presence is, conversely, beneficial to certain human communities, such as the Maasai, as they perform a pest prevention service in farming communities, consuming the majority of other crop-pests, from insects to large rats. Their main diet consists of invertebrates, such as tarantulas, scorpions, other ants, roaches, beetles, and grasshoppers, as well as small reptiles and amphibians (Youth 2007). They pose little threat to most mammals and birds, which in turn consume the ants, with some bird species apparently dependent on the swarms (Youth 2007). Up to fifty bird species have been found to follow army ant swarms in the Amazon basin (Youth 2007).

The bite of the large soldier ants is severely painful, each soldier leaving two puncture wounds when removed. Removal is difficult, however, as their jaws are extremely strong, and one can pull a soldier ant in two without the ant releasing its hold. Such is the strength of the ant’s jaws, in East Africa they are used as natural, emergency sutures. Maasai moroni, when they suffer a gash in the bush, will use the soldiers to stitch the wound, by getting the ants to bite on both sides of the gash, then breaking off the body. This seal can hold for days at a time.

In East Africa Safari Ants Are Used As What

The East African safari ant is a species of carrion-feeding ant native to Tanzania and surrounding areas. The ants are often used as a food source by local people. They are also prized for their medicinal properties. The most popular use for the ant is as an ingredient in traditional medicine, where it is used to treat various skin and eye ailments.

The ants have been used in this way for centuries, but they are becoming increasingly hard to find due to deforestation and habitat destruction. This has prompted many people who rely on them for income or medicine to start raising them at home, which can be very difficult because they are aggressive animals that tend to bite when threatened.

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