Cambodia’s Blue Ants Use Teamwork to Pull Prey

PHNOM PENH (Khmer Times) – Giant blue ants that are smart enough to form lines to transport their prey may sound like science fiction. But researchers Saturday released the first ever study of Leptogenys, a species of ant that meets this description and lives deep in Cambodia’s forests.

The ants form chains - much like a team of tug-of-war players - to pull giant millipedes, weighing up to 16.4 grams, back to their nests. A few ants grasp the millipede with their mandibles, while the rest pull on the first ant from behind. The chains can stretch more than 20 ants long, making Leptogeny the first species of ant in the world that uses this kind of teamwork to transport its prey.

Famed ant expert Christian Peeters, together with bioengineer and photographer Stéphane de Greef, first discovered the Leptogenys in 2010. They moved on to other research, until Leptogenys gained internet fame in 2014, when a video of the ants dragging a massive millipede got more than 200,000 views. Seeing their ant’s new celebrity, Mr. Peeters and Mr. de Greef decided it was time to research the mysterious new species more thoroughly.

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