Paraguay may appear at first glance to be a land of cattle, but look a little closer and you will see there is another far more abundant creature filling every nook and cranny of the land, ants.
If there is one thing in which Paraguay can claim to lead the world it is in the production of varieties of ants. There is something about the Paraná basin in which Paraguay sits that causes it to have a greater collection of ant species than almost anywhere else in the world. Many of which are still undocumented.
It is not however the case that Paraguay keeps all those ants to itself. Many of the worlds worst pest species including both the fire ant and the Argentine ant are native to the area.
Ants in Paraguay come in a myriad of colours and sizes. Many are black but there are to golden, red and even multicoloured ants also. Their sizes are equally varied from no bigger than grains of dust up to the size of a small beetle.
One thing many of these ants do have in common is their aggresive nature. More than a few give quite painful stings and some will attack on mass when disturbed. I don’t know why this is so but having so many species trying to claim a territory on the same piece of land may have something to do with it.
With such a great number of types, many of which are unknown to science it would be impossible to describe them all. So I shall just deal with a few to give a general overview. Unfortunatly I have never had reason to learn their proper names.
As good a place to start would be with one of the smallest, most common and most aggresive. These ants ants look little more than golden specks of dust and when they emerge they always do en masse.
They clearly have a strong sense of smell for if ever food is spilled on the ground they soon appear biting anything in their path. They are also drawn to body odours and so will quickly find dirty washing left lying on the ground. Many people have old house clothes peppered with the pin prick holes these ants leave behind.
Another place they like to get is into bedding. Climbing into an ant infested bed is not a pleasent experience. The pain of their bite is far greater than one might expect from something so small.
Slightly larger, more the size of an English ant is equally common but far less agressive ant. It is a black ant and is almost always found outdoors. There a small but steady stream of ants will appear from a whole, of line of holes in the earth. These ants do occasionally bite, but not painfully and more out of curiosity. Their main source of irritation is their willingness to run across feet or any other part of the body to get where they want to go. They are though benificial as they clear away dead insects.
Another type of similar size and colour can be a little more trouble, although it to is benificial. Army ants marching for hours or days in long columns exploring everything in their path and destroying any insects they encounter. They case little trouble as long as the column is not stepped on and as long as they do not get indoors.
One final medium sized ant to mention is an over ground nest builder and an aggresive biter. These ants are black and gold and travel by way of tunnels just below the surface of the soil. Rather than digging down to a nest chamber they build a domed nest, about the size of a football on it’s surface. This nest is packed with ants and if accidently trodden on guards swam out to defend it whilst others rush to move the ant cocoons out of harms way. These are very swiftly moving ants that will continue biting until destroyed.
And now finally onto one further ant that does not harm man but can swiftly do great damage to his plants. This is the leaf cutter ant. A large red ant so named for what it does, removing leafs in great numbers from any plant for which it has a taste.
These leafs are not though for food for in the animal kingdom this ant is quite special. Like man it is a farmer and the leaves are taken deep down into the nest so that the fungus on which the colony feeds can be grown on them.
The ants are all red but come in several sizes and forms depending in their jobs. Some are the size of any medium sized and and do small jobs around the nest. Larger ants carry leaf parts far bigger than themselves back to the nest and the largest, the size of a small beetle, with their oversized heads and pincers take charge and cut the leaves from trees and plants for others waiting below.
However for all their skills and ingenuity they are not welcome visitors to a garden where they can strip a bush in a couple of nights. As such the largest nests and colonys, with all the pathways that radiate from them are found away from cultivated ground.
That covers just there mearest selection of the ants of Paraguay and it is quite likely I will see later today one that I have never seen before.
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