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Updated: May 1, 2025
I have traced an army sometimes for half a mile or more, but was never able to find one that had finished its day's course and returned to its hive. Indeed, I never met with a hive; whenever the Ecitons were seen, they were always on the march. I thought one day, at Villa Nova, that I had come upon a migratory horde of this indefatigable ant.
This species closely resembles a green leaf, and the other senses, which in the Ecitons appear to be more acute than that of sight, must have been completely deceived.
When a nest of the Hypoclinea is attacked, the ants rush out, carrying the larvae and pupae in their jaws, only to be immediately despoiled of them by the Ecitons, which are running about in every direction with great swiftness. Whenever they come across a Hypoclinea carrying a larva or pupa, they capture the burden so quickly, that I could never ascertain exactly how it was done.
It differs from all other Ecitons in its habit of hunting, not in columns, but in dense phalanxes consisting of myriads of individuals, and was first met with at Ega, where it is very common. Nothing in insect movements is more striking than the rapid march of these large and compact bodies. Wherever they pass all the rest of the animal world is thrown into a state of alarm.
There are two species of blind ecitons which, however, go on foraging expeditions, and even attack the nests of other stinging species; but, avoiding the light, they move always under leaves and fallen branches: when the columns have to pass a cleared space, the ants form covered ways with granules of earth, arched over and holding together mechanically.
At last the wood-louse reached the bottom of the slope, and concealed itself amongst some leaves; but the ant soon discovered it, paralysed it with a sting, and was running away with it, turned back downwards, beneath itself, when I secured the hunter for my collection. All these ants that hunt singly have the eyes well developed, and thus differ greatly from the Ecitons, or army ants.
I am inclined, however, to think that they may act, in a less direct way, as protectors of the community, namely, as indigestible morsels to the flocks of ant-thrushes which follow the marching columns of these Ecitons, and are the most formidable enemies of the species.
The eager freebooters rushed in as fast as I excavated, and seized the ants in my fingers as I picked them out, so that I had some difficulty in rescuing a few intact for specimens. In digging the numerous mines to get at their prey, the little Ecitons seemed to be divided into parties, one set excavating, and another set carrying away the grains of earth.
Probably this cowardly and un-antly deposition has caused it to become the prey of the Eciton. At any rate, I never saw the Ecitons attack the nest of other species.
As I returned to the boat, I crossed a column of the army or foraging ants, many of them dragging along the legs and mangled bodies of insects that they had captured in their foray. I afterwards often encountered these ants in the forests and it may be convenient to place together all the facts I learnt respecting them. The Ecitons, or foraging ants, are very numerous throughout Central America.
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