Sci: Ant lions

 

On Cape York, ant lions dig their pits in the open, at least in the dry season. Note the boot print for scale.

I began playing with ant lions in 1951, and they are still my favourite animals, because they dig such neat holes, like this.

The ant lion sits in a pit in the sand, waiting for food to tumble in. (Yes, this was also in chapter 5.)

To keep ant lions, you will need some sandy soil in a flat tray, a plastic cup and a supply of ants. They live in sandy soil, under rock overhangs, beneath the eaves of houses, or under houses that are on piers, and similar sandy areas. Get some dry sand or sandy soil, put it in a flat tray, about 6 cm deep, and then hunt your ant lions. Look for small conical holes, about 1 to 3 cm across, in sandy soil in dry places.

Use the plastic cup to scoop up an entire conical nest, taking 2 or 3 cm of sand from underneath, and dump the whole lot into a bucket. Do this a few times, and take your sand back to the tray. Spread the collected sand out, and wait for a while: soon you will see the ant lions start to dig new holes.

A white dish has all sorts of uses. Here, it’s a holiday home for ant lions.

Let them go without food for a day or two, and then make up some sort of an ant trap (a test tube with a small amount of treacly sugar solution or “Vegemite” works well). Leave the trap near an ant nest. When there are a few ants inside, pick the tube up, and seal it, then take it to the ant lion tray. The tray will be looking like a lunar landscape, with little pits where the ant lions are. Release a couple of ants in the middle, and watch what happens.

Ant lions are the larval stages of beautiful lacewings, and adults and larvae all prey on small insects. Mostly the larvae eat ants, but I have also seen one eat a small weevil.

The larva of a lacewing, which we call an ant lion.

The ant lion has a large head, with a big pair of nippers. It burrows into loose dry sandy soil and then throws sand out with flicks of its head, making a small conical pit. Then it sits at the bottom of the pit, waiting for something to fall in.

The dry sand is at the angle of rest for sand, around 30 degrees. If anything blunders over the edge, it and a small amount of sand, tumble to the bottom of the pit where the JAWS are waiting. If the ant escapes, the sides of the pit fall down, carrying the ant back again, and all the while, the ant lion is tossing more sand up out of the pit. Some of that rolls down, pushing the ant back to the bottom. Soon the ant is seized, and pulled under the surface, where the ant lion slurps out its body juices.

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