May 4, 2024
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CVNT Poison meme!! // DELTARUNE CHAPER 5 IS HERE RRAHHHH 🔥🔥🔥
..sorry for the lack of ringmaster content guys, don’t throw tomatoes at me.. ✋🤚
Lost in the saauce
🪲ID Guess: Spider Ants 🌿Date: October 2025
An ant we know little about, Cataglyphis lutea
Cataglyphis lutea (UAE and parts of India) is a desert dwelling ant, the photos of this ant on iNaturalist caught my eye, since, like Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus (the Spider Ant of Australia), this these little ants fold their gasters over their mesonoma.
Very little is known about Cataglyphis lutea, shockingly little. I can't even find a mention of gaster folding in any of the brief descriptions of this ant.
*This* is why descriptions are not enough.
Yes we have identified thousands of species of ants, but for many all that means in a single dry sample in a museum drawer and five or six sentences describing the ant. We know nothing of the ants behavior, their interactions with other ants and arthropods, their role in the environment.
Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus, is called the "spider ant" but it's not even clear if this ant is trying to mimic a spider, or mimic anything at all. As for what C. lutea is doing? These are her mysteries.
(photos by Jonghyn Park and TimL)
I was able to find a paper about the genus Cataglyphis that uses some serious geometry to make the case that raising their gaster may improve mobility. But, this paper did not cover ants that fold the gaster all the way over as these ants do.
Australian spider ants are elegant little machines.
With their elongated legs and peculiar gait, ants of the Leptomyrmex genus are strangely beautiful creatures. Almost all spider-ant species hail from our neck of the woods (eastern Australia, New Caledonia, New Guinea and parts of Indonesia), except for one: Leptomyrmex relictus, which somehow made its way to central Brazil.
Spider Ant (Leptomyrmex spp.) on Lichen, Fam. Formicidae, Oxley Wild River National Park, New South Wales, Australia
Photographer: Gerhard Koertner
In this short documentary I cover all the strange happenings inside a large colony of “Spider Ants” (Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus). From their spider-like body structure, to their wingless queens, to their massive repletes, and their bat-like nesting behaviours...Some very odd ants indeed!
Boy our ant queen sure is great am I right?