Bullet Ants

Ideally, Paraponera clavata is very famous because of its huge shape as well as its painful sting. The workers ate between 18 and 25mm long with physical appearances of stout, reddish black and wingless wasps. Their stings are painfully incomparable with its attendant weakness. Although, it was named the huge tropical ant, meanwhile it has many other names according to the regions and realities relating to its merciless stings and these include hormiga bala or bullet ant, viente-cuatro-hora hormiga or 24 hours ants.

Neptropical paraponera can be found in Atlantic coaster lowland rainforest from to as far as Amazon River basin. In Costa Rica, it can be found as far as around 500m forest growth. It has been revealed that bullet ants are the third in rank of the highly rampant ant of 52 canopy dwelling species.

Bullet and queens are a little bit longer than workers just for the laying of eggs. Meanwhile, grown up colonies are relatively smaller and contain of some thousands of ants at the maximum. It is noteworthy to point out that workers display and apportion works according to their sizes. While the smaller shaped ants are left inside to take care of the little ones, the bigger sizes workers protect the nest as well as searching for foods. Fresh colonies are brought to existence by just one queen while the set up colonies are made up of one mated queen.

Bullet ants otherwise called paraponera usually nest inside the ground at the tree bases and many at times take over arboreal cavities. Nest sites can be fully shaded or even get different level ray of light from the sun. The nests typically build with one entrance meanwhile there can be two or more openings.
Most often, workers go in search of food inside canopy in addition to understory but rarely on the ground surface. Nest linked trees are the channel being used to get to the canopy meanwhile, nestmates can be recruited through pheromone trails, yet matured workers can depend on landmarks. Bullet ants are generally predators and also scavenge liquid overflow or droplets, prey and plants parts. They love honey more than water even though they collect water to feed larvae.
The natural enemies of bullets ants can be mentioned as conspecitious from another colony, parasitoid as well as entomopathic fungus which has the attribute of leaving mummified spore-beaaring ants attaching to vegetation. It has fully grown stings and abdominal stridulatory. This sting comes up as an attacking force when searching for food but use as a defence when protecting. Generally, bullet ant is not all that on attacking mission unless for self or territory defence. The reaction of its stings on human should be better imagines than experienced while the pain is fell for about 3 to 5 hours. It may trigger off trembling, perspiration, nausea and ineffective functioning of the affected arm or leg.

Attempts made to gather and culture bullets ants as a behavior research tool was met with failure. We strongly recommend the safety of the keeper as well as that of public safety in the process of meeting bullet ant requirements. The cages and accesses should be visibly tagged “Hot” and “Venomous” s that everybody can beware only the qualified personnel that agree to work with the ants should be allowed. Particularly, keepers are taught on:
The inspection and monitoring the service portal perimeters prior to opening and putting their arms.
Do not make jarring sound or breathing directly over the ants to avoid the stimulation of alarm attitude.
Ensure that you use at least 30 cm long forceps to replace food dishes or clear debris.

Engage the service of spotter for safety measure in times of disruptive procedures including full cleaning and nest adjustments.