Dorylus, also known as driver ants, safari ants, or siafu, is a large genus of army ants found primarily in central and east Africa, although the range also extends to southern Africa and tropical Asia. The term siafu is a loanword from Swahili, and is one of numerous similar words from regional Bantu languages used by indigenous peoples to describe various species of these ants.
Ants aren't usually the first things people look at when on safari, but they are fascinating beasts when looked at up close.
Male Dorylus ant
Habitat and Behavior
Driver ants can be found in central, southern, and eastern Africa, as well as in Asia.
Unlike the New World members of the former subfamily Ecitoninae (now Dorylinae), members of this genus form temporary subterranean bivouacs in underground cavities which they excavate and inhabit - either for a few days or up to three months.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
These colonies aren’t fixed to a position like most ant species.
Instead, they move around with their brood and their food, and set up temporary subterranean bivouacs; structures built from the very ants themselves, inside which the queen and larvae are protected by walls of interlocked legs and mandibles.
While migrating, they make a new one of these each night and dissolve into raiding patrols the next day.
These ferocious ant colonies, when in the nomadic stage, move to a new spot each day.
Weaver Ants Oecophylla longinoda
Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas
Diet and Predatory Habits
Also, unlike some New World army ants, driver ants are not specialized predators of other species of ant, instead being more generalistic with a diet consisting of a diversity of arthropods.
A large part of their diet consists of earthworms.
They mostly diet on insects, and earthworms - but they can also consume small animals, such as mice, snakes, snakes, birds or anything else that might not move out of their way.
Using their powerful cutting jaws, driver ants attack everything in their path, including snakes, birds, mammals, and even human beings.
Their systematic search for prey involves climbing into trees and shrubs.
Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery
They can also take on prey as big as a large rat or chicken, leave well-marched trails behind them, and are almost continuously on the move.
As food becomes scarce, they will migrate to new locations to find food.
Driver ant raids are powerful and efficient and can disappear as quickly as they arrive.
Within 45 minutes to an hour, in most cases, they’ve moved on with their loot.
These raiders fan out across the ground with countless thousands of individuals spread out, looking for food.
Driver ants are predators, and as such are not interested in your coke can or fruit.
Instead, they will tackle anything with protein, and once a food source is found, the dispersed individuals gradually collapse into organized channels, encased inside tubes of guard ants, each one raising its enormous jaws to the sky as a warning.
They will attack anything they come across, and while the thick, organised branches of soldiers are relatively easy to spot, if you’re unlucky enough to walk in the grass while they’re fanned out, you’ll be quickly treated to a barrage of bites.
They’re also good at scavenging, and during the rainy season, you may wake up to find them raiding your kitchen for scraps.
While they are not specialized predators of other ant species, they will go to war with other ants that come into their path.
The winner usually has the largest army.
Army Ants Eat Everything | World's Deadliest
Colony Size and Structure
Their colonies are enormous compared to other ant species, and can contain over 20 million individuals.
When a driver ant colony goes on a raid, they routinely bring with them up to fifty million individuals.
This breathtaking phenomenon can span hundreds of meters, perhaps even kilometres, and contains so many marching feet that it’s audible from standing nearby.
The ants carve a trail through almost any terrain and leave a well-trodden path behind them when they leave.
Like all army ants, colonies will comprise of hierarchical and specialized roles.
There’s worker ants that are usually blind or have limited vision and will carry out a variety of tasks to support the colony.
Larger solidier ants have scissor-like mandibles and protect members.
There’s one queen who is the largest, and can mate with multiple males.
Mating males known as ‘sausage flies’ due to their inflated abdomens are able to fly, and seek out the queen ant to reproduce.
Physical Characteristics and Caste System
As with their American counterparts, workers exhibit caste polymorphism with the soldiers having particularly large heads that power their scissor-like mandibles.
Workers tend to display caste polymorphism, in that they have very large heads that house the muscles which power their huge mandibles.
Columns are arranged with the smaller ants being flanked by the larger soldier ants.
These instinctively take up positions as sentries, and set a perimeter corridor through which the smaller ants can run safely.
They are capable of stinging, but very rarely do so, relying instead on their powerful shearing jaws.
Interaction with Humans
Seasonally, when food supplies become short, they leave the hill and form marching columns of up to 20,000,000 ants, which constitute a considerable threat to humans, though they can be easily avoided as a column can only travel about 20 meters in an hour.
It is for those unable to move, or when the columns pass through homes, that there is the greatest risk.
The characteristic long columns of ants will fiercely defend themselves against anything that attacks them.
Their bite 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 it releasing its hold.
Such is the strength of the ant's jaws that, in East Africa, they are used as natural emergency sutures.
Various East African indigenous tribal peoples (e.g. the Maasai moran), when suffering from a laceration in the wilds, 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.
The presence of a mobile column of safari ants is, conversely, beneficial to certain human communities, such as the Maasai.
Some tribes use the soldier’s powerful mandibles as a form of natural stitches.
They allow the ant to bite the wound, then remove the body.
