(RM) Driver ants

Sunday, 6 May 2007

Driver ants


In the midst of the drama, Brigham shared with us some sage advice given him at some point by Gottfried, the founder of LuiKotal Camp: "Brigham, one day, you will wake up and driver ants will be all over your tent. When this happens, do not go out of your tent. Not even if you really need to use the bathroom. They will be gone in 30 minutes."

We were in the midst of a driver ant invasion. Our camp is about 40 metres across, and the wave of driver ants spent the better part of about six hours weaving their way methodically through a good portion of its surfaces.

The ants were first acknowledged at around 1:30pm, when Andrew came back from his tent to wish us farewell as he departed for the afternoon shift in the forest. His tent is down a short path just northeast of our camp clearing, and the area was apparently crawling with the ants.

I first noticed the wave entering the camp at its northeast corner, probably around 2:30. Brigham and I sat watching them from the momentary safety of my 'salon' (the roof that shelters my tent has room for a second tent, where I keep an inflatable sofa on a tarp). The
space between my shelter (a sloped roof held up by columns; there are no walls at LuiKotal) and the row of pineapple plants at the forest edge is perhaps two metres wide. When we first sat down to watch, there were various thick lines of them marching together, intertwined with smaller lines of them marching about, interspersed with individuals covering the rest of the space. Within five or ten minutes, the space was absolutely teeming with driver ants! There was literally not a square inch of sand that did not have at least one driver ant crossing it.

The biggest creature we saw being overcome by them from our comfortable spot looked like a large cicada, although it wasn't very identifiable through the mass of ants enveloping it. We watched as unfortunate little crickets hopped into the throng, only to realise their folly and try in vain to hop away before being devoured. The larger crickets actually fared worse, writhing wildly as they were overcome. I was glad to see the little cockroaches get pounced upon - I hate those fuckers anyway. I wish I'd seen more of the bigger roaches to flick into the mess.

Basically, the small clearing was just covered with a massive coordinated hunting party. Any creature in its path is attacked by whichever ants first encounter it, and is quickly immobilised by the throngs of ants that follow. Thus, in addition to the thick lines of ants, the thin lines of ants, and the individual ants, there were increasing numbers of thick clusters of ants indicating where various prey was being eaten alive. We recalled Gottfried's story of putting an open can of corned beef in the middle of one such hunting party. "It took them two days to finish," he had told us, "I have pictures!"

The driver ants probably qualify as the scariest creatures of the forest. Sure, there are a few leopards around that could conceivably attack a human, and there are forest elephants that ostensibly charge at people on sight, but the likelihood of actually seeing either of those is so slim that we would actually love to run into them and take our chances (leopards generally flee before you see them, and elephants can easily be outmaneuvered in the dense forest). Driver ants, on the other hand, will always attack maliciously, and the only way to escape is to flee and pick then them all off yourself. The biggest forest fashion trend among westerners at LuiKotal Camp is inspired by the driver ants: long pants tucked into the socks. Like this, when you walk (run!) through a hunting expedition of driver ants along the trail, the individual ants can be then picked off (the outside of) your clothing as they crawl all over you.

Driver ants are apparently blind, as they evolved from a type of termite that didn't really venture out into daylight anyway. Their ant society is composed of various specialists, each performing specific roles for the good of the group. I was able to discern three different types of individuals among the mass that came through camp. There are probably several more tiers to the hierarchy; I was too enthralled by the actions of the group as a whole unit to really focus on each of the individuals. (I was also quite cautious to not get too close to them, lest too many crawl up my legs at once - they're painful!)

The smallest ones, perhaps about half a centimeter in length, were the most abundant. They were clearly the biggest killers, overcoming prey in seconds by their sheer numbers.

The largest ones, maybe about 1.3cm long, with sharp mandibles about 2mm in length protroding from their heads, appeared to be sentinels. They were stationed periodically along lines of the smaller ants, constantly waving their pincers in the air in varying orientations, in order to keep watch for anything out of the ordinary. They were also to be found near the crest of a given wave of ants, exploring new territory, essentially serving the same role. I found that attempting to hack any of these big guys in half with the end of a shovel would temporarily halt the smaller ants around my victim.

The medium-sized ants seemed to be the scouts, scoping out fresh stretches of camp that weren't yet covered in driver ants. Working in tandem with the big ones, these ants formed the crests of the waves that slowly crossed LuiKotal Camp.

Brigham knew of one insect species that can actually put up a good fight against the driver ants: a type of smaller black ant. One tactical advantage is that they are similar in size to the smaller warrior caste of driver ants (so individuals don't get overtaken by sheer numbers), while their other advantage is that they have sight. We have a nest of these little black ants on a tree at the edge of camp - it's a football-sized ball of honeycombed soil attached to the trunk about two metres from the ground. So of course we hacked a chunk of the nest with a machete, and, using a shovel, brought it to be dumped into the centre of the driver ants.

Sitting back in the sofa, we watched in awe at how quickly the mass of red ants was dispersed. Where there had been not a single square inch of sand without a driver ant in it, there was soon a round clearing that grew to nearly a metre across - those little black ants did wonders!

But of course the driver ants had to go somewhere, and our space was next. They started up the columns supporting the roof, and started scouting out the dry soil under it. That was our cue to retreat. The wave had also moved past the side of my shelter, southwards to the long shelter covering the other three tents (Caro's, Martin's, and Brigham's, with some similar tent-free space in between). Some ant-free sand still stood between the two tent shelter structures and our central sitting/eating structure, so we went there to sit and read and chat.

Without a good view of the ant mayhem, our attention moved on to other matters. One of my roles at camp is to manage the food supplies so that we have the most variety for the longest amount of time, so this is when I had my second argument of the day with one of our local workers: I told the cook that the workers would get canned sardines for dinner instead of smoked fish, since we're running low on smoked fish and I've been getting it out for several dinners in a row now.

The first argument had been when I tried, unsuccessfully, to get our bonobo worker to go for his rendez-vous in the forest despite the rain. He refused, which is why Andrew left at 1:30 - to meet Martin in the forest instead of Papa Endu.

We chilled out in our sitting/eating area for a little while, reading and discussing the workers' intransigeance, as the workers brewed in their area discussing how inconsiderate we were being. But soon the ants found us there too! They had gotten into the blue barrel that we keep next to the table to hold condiments like instant coffee, sugar, salt, and such. They were climbing up the columns and into the palm-frond roof overhead, and they had begun to envelope one of the bench seats. We had to retreat, and we had to postpone our dinner.

This was around 5:30, and it was getting dark, so we all needed our headlamps in order discern whether or not a patch of ground in front of us was covered in driver ants or not. This drew our workers' attention, and they came over to survey the scene as well. The wave had mostly moved on from my shelter, it stretched fully across the longer shelter with the other three tents, and the mass was slowly filling in the space between there and our central sitting/eating shelter. We couldn't sit, and the other tents were inaccessible for the moment.

From the workers' shelter, I heard the cook doing a chant, and wondered whether he was praying for us or for them. Evidently, the ants were attacking us because we had been so inconsiderate to them, so this was our just punishment. But evidently, the ants may well move on towards the workers' sleeping quarters, which is not as impervious to ants as our tents. I think his chant was intended to divert the oncoming wave away from their direction.

Sure enough, the ants soon dispersed from our table, remaining in the immediate vicinity only in clearly-demarcated paths that could be safely monitored from the benches. This was probably by around 6:30 or 7, so we got to sit down for dinner shortly after Andrew and Martin returned from nesting the bonobos (in the rain). That also gave the ants time to move on from the long tent shelter before anyone had to actually access their tents. We ate to the sound of a squirrel chirping desperately from a nearby tree in the forest - evidently being surrounded and attacked by the marching army.

By 8:30, our end of camp was relatively safe from marauding driver ants - we could each approach our tents cautiously. I think a branch of the moving wave of ants had begun to come out of the forest at the workers' end, because they were busy building barricades of hot ashes and coals between the forest edge and their shelter - while our tactic had been to simply wait them out, hot coals can speed up their departure.

Now it's 10:30, and I've been sitting in my 'salon' for the past two hours, typing away unaccosted. The driver ants have already come and gone from LuiKotal Camp for the day, and they actually provided the useful service of eradicating lots of the other non-flying insects in their path - it was eerie to see the shocked cockroaches cowering in plain sight this evening, having somehow survived the passing army.

This was the most intense exposure to the driver ants that I've had since being here. We encounter them very regularly though, and we will see them again soon. It's entirely likely that I'll wake up at some point to the sound of driver ants flowing over the outside of my tent in a continuous wave, at which point I'll hope there are no tiny holes in the fabric that I hadn't noticed and patched before. It'll be frustrating if I have to pee, but otherwise, if I'm supposed to wake up, I think I may actually appreciate being forced to remain in my tent for a while longer and wait them out. Because although the driver ants may be the most vicious creatures in the forest that I know of, their hunting party will soon have moved on to somewhere else.