Born Killer Ants, Cut in Half and Still Fight, Like 'Zombies'

Australia is a magical place, always producing some unique animals.

Like the kangaroo with a beefy physique, the Tasmanian Devil with a dog-like size and combat power comparable to a flathead, and the Australian ostrich that runs quickly without flying.

Of course, today we're explaining the ant-bull, also known as the cattle ant, which is about 90 species and lives almost all in the magical Australia.

They come from the oldest ant family, about 1.4 million years ago, evolved from a wasp-like ancestor, appearing during the ant species burst.

In the past, the cattle ants lived in many places around the world, but now they only live in Australia, considering that there are so many poisonous and deadly animals in Australia, it seems quite reasonable.

The cattle ants are a large, venomous ant, but among the many venomous ants, few other species of ants are as fascinating and evil as the cattle ants.

The cattle ant's horror is not only due to its appearance, but also due to its ruthless personality, and some people even call them 'zombie ants' or 'killing ants'.

Large in size, with three fingers' worth of finger-sized spikes, the cattle ant is the largest ant in Australia, and its size is second only in the world.

If you observe ordinary ants, you will find that most ants are very miniature, the smallest only about 2mm, a little bigger is not more than 10mm.

However, in terms of appearance, the cattle ant is not a small ant, how big is it exactly?

According to statistics, the smallest cattle ants are 15mm, and the largest can grow to 40mm, with three fingers' worth of finger-sized spikes, several times larger than ordinary ants, even larger than bees.

Most importantly, this is the size of the ordinary worker ant, not the queen ant.

Such a large body shape has changed their way of life.

As we all know, ants are social creatures, an ant colony usually has thousands of ants, and for the cattle ants, an ant colony only needs a few hundred members to defend their home.

The cattle ants not only have venomous stings, but also have powerful jaws, and you can feel the most painful bite experience here.

In fact, the pain caused by the cattle ant biting is one of the most painful ant bites on earth.

They have a rather large and annoying venomous sting, which is very aggressive, and the venom produced can paralyze smaller animals and insects, and even humans will suffer from anaphylactic shock and death because of it.

If the stings cannot scare you, you should take a look at its powerful jaws.

When they use stings, they usually bite the opponent first, in order to fix the enemy in the right position, then they arch their rear bodies to pierce the head of the enemy, when they use venomous stings, they usually bite the opponent first, in order to fix the enemy in the right position, then they arch their rear bodies to pierce the head of the enemy.

Whether it's in front or behind, the cattle ant is dangerous.

The cattle ant is a natural killing ant, even if it's cut in half, it will continue to fight.

The cattle ants can attack themselves, this is because they have more than one 'brain'.

When an animal cuts an ant in half, it is not dead, but can continue to fight, which is impossible for ants, but it is reasonable for ants.

This is because they have more than one 'brain'. The ant's brain is mainly responsible for vision, touch and smell, while the other mini brains are called nerve nodes, which are distributed throughout the body from end to end, and mainly responsible for assisting the brain and movement function, all nerve nodes can respond to danger.

Therefore, when an ant is cut in half, the two halves of the ant's body still have the ability to move, at this time the ant feels that it is in danger, and it will actively attack the nearest moving object, which is the other half of the body it was split into.

It has a fierce personality and occasionally preys on other animals, but mostly it is vegetarian.

Although it's big in size, has venomous spikes and sharp jaws, looks scary, the cattle ant is not completely a scary meat-eating animal.Usually, adult cattle ants like to eat plants, flower nectar and other sugary foods, but for the children, they will kill other insects and animals to obtain nutrition.

The cattle ant larvae are small and soft, and also very helpless, so other ants will bring the paralyzed insects to the nest for the larvae to eat until they grow up to pupate.

This means that the larvae usually depend on these insects to live, feeding them.

As the larvae slowly grow, their attention will shift to sugary foods, even so, they will still lick aphids.

Recently, researchers have discovered that these ants have another unusual ability, which is unrelated to biting, attacking or defending, but related to pollen.

When the cattle ants encounter pollen on the road, they will

secrete a special chemical substance, which can kill pollen.

This means that even if these ants like flower nectar and plant sugar, they cannot help other plants with pollination like bees. They are just here to get food for themselves, not to help others.

This is an unusual ability, and scientists are currently testing this secretion to find out if it can be used to treat human diseases and help humans solve serious allergies.

Don't provoke them, they will chase you all the way.

The cattle ants are not only powerful in venom and intelligent, they have good vision and sensitive smell and touch, when danger is approaching, they will not hesitate to use all means to make a living.

First, they will actively rush to the enemy's face, scare the enemy, some cattle ants will jump up when frightened, then look for the source of fear, and launch a epic ant war.Sometimes, the cattle ant's jump can reach 50mm, which doesn't seem like much, considering the size of the large ant 40mm, you will be surprised by its bounce.

If frontal attack fails, the ant will take a flanking attack from behind,

entering the enemy's back door, then appearing in the unprepared attacker in front, using its jaws to grab it, constantly stabbing until the attacker loses the ability or leaves.

But even if the attacker escapes in a panic, the cattle ant will not easily let go of you.

As we all know, ants will actively chase any creature in their private space because they can see within one meter, so they can chase you for a long distance, considering their size, this chase is not slow.

Finally

Although these ants are distributed throughout Australia and the cattle ants have 90 different species, this does not mean they are safe in front of meat-eating animals.

Their biggest enemies are us.

Over the years, the number of cattle ants has been declining, and they have been listed on the red list of the World Conservation Union as endangered species.

Unfortunately, there are currently no major protective measures to protect these ants, we still don't know the exact number of ants and how they thrive in the wild.

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