Total war: I walked recently on the Desert Classic Trail in the South Mountain Preserve. Where normally I see harvester ants busily attending to their ant business, on this hike I watched with amazement as two colonies went to war. The path was covered with tiny rolling balls of ant combatants, moving too fast for me to really tell what was going on. It was only after I enlarged my photos that I could see their death grips and locked mandibles and their flailing legs. I think the ants must use olfactory cues to tell members of one colony from another, because I couldn’t see the difference. I wonder what grievances ants conceive or suffer of their neighbors, and what moves them to such violence and aggression.
In the Pima Canyon unit of the South Mountain Preserve, Phoenix, Arizona.
Dithyramb 