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Updated: May 1, 2025
The two common species of ecitons are, Eciton hamata and Eciton drepanophora, which are very similar in their habits and appearance. They are of the most pugnacious character, and a person incautiously getting in their midst finds himself furiously attacked. They climb up his legs, and, holding on by their pincer-like jaws, double in their tails, and sting with all their might.
The blind Ecitons, working in numbers, build up simultaneously the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive, in a surprising manner, to approximate them and fit in the key-stones without letting the loose uncemented structure fall to pieces. There was a very clear division of labour between the two classes of neuters in these blind species.
They mounted the twigs, and, gnawing away at the papery covering, quickly got at the larvae and the newly-hatched wasps. These they carried off in spite of the efforts of the enraged parents, who kept flying about them. They were ecitons, or foraging ants, of which there are numerous species.
All the Ecitons hunt in large organised bodies; but almost every species has its own special manner of hunting. Eciton rapax. One of the foragers, Eciton rapax, the giant of its genus, whose worker-majors are half-an-inch in length, hunts in single file through the forest.
The Ecitons resemble, in their habits, the Driver ants of Tropical Africa; but they have no close relationship with them in structure, and indeed belong to quite another sub-group of the ant-tribe.
In spite of all the tremendous slaughter, the Ecitons, in late afternoon, raided a small colony of Wasps-of-the-Painted-Nest. These little chaps construct a round, sub-leaf carton-home, as large as a golf ball, which carries out all the requirements of counter shading and of ruptive markings.
The natives, on seeing them, cry out, "Tauoca" the name which they give to the ecitons and scamper off to a distance. The only way of getting rid of them is to pluck them out one by one; but so securely do they fasten themselves to the skin, that their head and jaws are left sticking to it.
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