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The natives, when they meet them in the forest, hurry out of their way, to avoid their fierce attacks. Their communities appear to be composed, besides males and females, of two classes of workers, one with head and jaws very much larger than the others. One species of these foraging ants is known as the Eciton rapax, the larger workers among which are half an inch in length.
They are carnivorous hunters who march in large armies, and are found on the banks of the Amazon, especially in the open campos of Santarem. The Eciton legionis chiefly carry off the mangled larvæ and pupæ of other ants.
Thus in Eciton, there are working and soldier neuters, with jaws and instincts extraordinarily different: in Cryptocerus, the workers of one caste alone carry a wonderful sort of shield on their heads, the use of which is quite unknown: in the Mexican Myrmecocystus, the workers of one caste never leave the nest; they are fed by the workers of another caste, and they have an enormously developed abdomen which secretes a sort of honey, supplying the place of that excreted by the aphides, or the domestic cattle as they may be called, which our European ants guard or imprison.
Two other species Eciton vastator, and Eciton erratica both of which are blind, move entirely under covered ways in search of promising hunting-grounds. Their arcades are sometimes two hundred yards in length, the grains of earth being taken from the soil over which the column is passing, and fitted together without cement.
In marching off they form a broad and compact column, sixty or seventy yards in length, those who may be empty-handed assisting heavily-laden comrades. The Eciton drepanophora attacks and carries off all kinds of insects, especially wingless species, such as maggots, caterpillars, larvæ of cockroaches, etc.
The errand of the vast ant-armies is plunder, as in the case of Eciton legionis; but from their moving always amongst dense thickets, their proceedings are not so easy to observe as in that species. Wherever they move, the whole animal world is set in commotion, and every creature tries to get out of their way.
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