🐜🩸 The Dracula Ant 🩸🐜

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(Edited)

Since I can remember myself I always found ants fascinating. And I still love reading and learning about them from time to time.

They are just amazing little buggers don't you agree?

And today I learnt about a species that engages in a really disturbing practice..

Let's first start with a picture:

Adetomyrma_venatrix_casent0172771_profile_1.jpg
source

Meet Adetomyrma venatrix, a small blind ant from the Madagascar. Fyi, the specimen depicted above is a typical worker.

So, what's so unique and disturbing about these ants. Well, they are commonly known as Dracula ants, which gives us a hint... They drink blood, but the source of blood is..their own fucking younglings!

Yep, they often feast on the hemolymph of their own larvae and pupae!

So I guess The Cannibal Dracula would be a more fitting name 😄

Not all is bad though. It turns out that the younglings often survive this brutal behavior and live to grow into healthy adults...that carry on the cannibalistic behavior 😅😂

The whys behind this gruesome behavior are still a mystery but one of the proposed theories is that the hemolyph acts as a much needed supplement for egg production that their natural prey can't provide.

Adetomyrma_venatrix_casent0172771_head_1.jpg
Head of Adetomyrma venatrix worker source

Unfortunately, the species appears to be critically endangered due to habitat loss, so there is a strong chance we will never get any good answers on their grisly feeding practices.

Ok, I hope you enjoyed reading about yet another bizarre creature with me. Maybe I'll dedicate some of my future posts on some other really bizarre ants. Here's a link to Wikipedia if you'd like to read a bit more on the species.

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28 comments
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That's just weird... Maybe they're critically endangered because they suck their young's blood?

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Nah just good ol human activity 😂

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(Edited)

I love ants, and I thought I knew a fair bit about them, but this species was news to me. Really interesting, and weird.

I've followed this guy on YouTube called Ants Canada for a few years, if you haven't heard of him check him out, you'll be in for a treat.

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I will, thanks for mentioning him!

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That’s totally savage. Yeah most things are going to be extinct soon.

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It's a weird ant. I wonder if it's the fact that they cannibalize their own kind that their population can't grow. Now with the environment being damaged, they can't survive.

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Nope, just good ol human activity 😆

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Bruh,,, check that stinger it has? They are small but still they do look.... nasty...

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And they use it to sting their pupae lmao

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Yeahh I read that, nasty business... but they do survive the ordeal mostly I'd assume? Im sure some pupae must die? But that's how their chain works right.

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I love ants because being a social insect, they teach the lessons of hardwork, unity and organization. This dracula ant is not different and since it's a worker, then.... Hardwork is its nature.
A very interesting specie.

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Earlier I didn't have much knowledge about this aunt, after your post, my knowledge has increased. There are some aunts which are very dangerous.

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mhmm! this is using what you have to get what you want being displayed by the Adetomyrma venatrix ant family.

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Nasty Sting, you failed to mention that. I hope they die out.

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