I wish I had gotten better photos of these ants but as I got down onto my hands and knees to be nice and near to the action, as I put my face down REAL close to the nest to get a good shot, and as ants started pouring out from the many entrances I kind of realised that maybe any photos would be better than someone finding my dead body days later with zero photos to show for it.
Meat ants are super important ecologically, not only because they aren't affected by cane toad poison and therefore play an effective role in their control by attacking and eating the toadlets but also as the name suggests, strip meat from the carcasses of dead vertebrates. This means of course that if I had died on top of that nest, there wouldn't have been any body to find, just my bones (eventually)!
Happy to report I'm not dead and I have no bites, although the workers sure did defend the nest!!! And the more I look, the more I'm gaining an appreciation for the non fluffy members of the backyard zoology world.
Meat Ants (aka Gravel Ants)
#ants #insects #entemology #australia #backyardzoology
