MAN-EATING ANTS.

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXI, Issue 3161, 4 May 1931, Page 7

MAN-EATING ANTS.

Terrors, But They Have Their Uses,

Bad as are white ants, they cannot be compared with the more desperate Warrior Ants. Warrior Ants, as their name implies, are fighters of the boldest and worst description. Once get across their line of march, and in less time than it takes to write, you will be covered from head to foot in a swarm of tearing, biting, rending ants—and unless 1 you can keep your head and move pretty quickly, they'll have you down. It is fatal to attempt to knock them off you while you continue to stand on that piece of ground, for as fast as you sweep them off, thousands of others will take their i places, crawling into your eyes, your ears, your nose, and even into your mouth. Your only chance of escape is to run as hard as you can, protecting your eyes as you run, and when you've outdistanced the horde and got right away, tear off your clothes and deal with the brutes with your bare hands. You will most probably be covered with tiny spots of blood, but better the blood than the ants! It is these same Warrior Ants that the Somalis and Zulus used to use for torturing purposes. Tney would bury a man up to his neck in the sand, and then let a crowd of Warrior Ants get busy upon his face and head. Sometimes, just to improve matters, they would invert a big pot over the victim's head so as a keep everything nice and snug inside. I once came across such an inverted pot, though it wasn't until I kicked it aside and discovered a whitened skull underneath it that I understood the ghastly use to which it had once been put. A rather curious feature about these Warrior Ants is that not only are they terrible fighters, but they actually move abroad in military formation. They travel in "column of route," eight or nine abreast, with the ants in rear treading exactly in the footprints of those in front. Millions upon millions of them will move like that, and to see them, it looks for all the world as though someone had laid a thin black ribbon across the country. The black ribbon loops and bends, winding its way round fallen trees and over great boulders, but although occasionally it will loop back almost upon itself, no single ant will ever break column to join the ants farther up. Each ant goes right round the loop, religiously following in the footsteps of the ant in front, and will continue to do so until he gets word from the head of the column that an attack is imminent.

Then, as though by magic the ribbon disintegrates and in the twinkling of an eye the ground for hundreds of yards around will be positively black with the creatures, each seeking what he may devour.

I remember an officer of the African Rifles telling me how once, during the war, his battalion was stampeded and almost captured by the Germans as the result of an attack by Warrior Ants. The battalion had camped in the bush for the night, and soon after midnight, a column of ants appeared upon the scene. Instantly, of course, the place was in an uproar. Pain-mad-dened soldiers were charging aoout in the darkness, officers and campfollowers running this way and that, running anywhere, anyhow, as long as they could escape the stinging, tearing ants which were creeping all over them. For four solid hours the ante occupied that camp, nor dare anybody return to it until they had gone. And when at last daylight came, the officer was compelled to rally his scattered troops with the bugle. And then, and only then, did he discover that a German force was encamped no more than half a mile away! Fortunately, however, the commander of the German forces had been as ignorant of the British position as the British had been of his; so the officer had time to collect his men and his rifles before the Germans could recover themselves sufficiently to attack. But it was a near thing—and all due to ants! They have their uses, however, especially in Africa. We used to employ them for cleaning up trophies, and for helping us to draw the tusks from fallen elephants. So we shot a buffalo with record horns and wished to keep the head. It was impossible to cure the mask in the jungle, so we used simply to bury the whole head in an ant hole, r wait a couple of days, and then dig it up again. The ants would have eaten every vestige of meat from the thing, leaving the bones and horns beautifully white and clean. Similarly with elephants. To chop the tusks out of an elephant's head is not only a long job, but a very tricky one, because the slightest slip of the axe and the ivory is ruined. Give the ai;ts a couple of days, however, and they will eat their way between the ivory and the surrounding tissue until it is possible to draw the tusks from their sockets as easily and as cleanly as drawing a knife from its sheath. So, bad as they are, like the rest of creation, they can still be said to have their uses!