Reprinted from: 1996 Invertebrates in Captivity Conference Proceeding
QUEST FOR THE GIANT TROPICAL BULLET ANT
Paraponera clavata

Randy C. Morgan
Associate Curator - Entomology
Insectarium, Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden
3400 Vine Street, Cincinnati, OH 45220 USA
Since March 1992, I have attempted to excavate four bullet ant nests, collect live ants and culture them at the Insectarium. My goal was to exhibit an active colony of these amazing insects (Fig. 1) for Zoo visitor enjoyment and education. Now my dream is finally reality. Here is the story of my trials, tribulations and triumphs.

JUNGLE GIANTS
The Amazon! Endless waterways snake through steaming tropical forests. Towering trees, draped with vines and ferns, shield undergrowth from baking sunlight and torrential rains. Countless creatures large and small call it home but, for me, an entomologist, it is Paradise!

In recent years, I have been privileged to explore the Peruvian Amazon as an instructor for International Expeditions' International Rainforest Workshops. These educational conservation-based programs were held at the Explorama Lodge and the Amazon Center for Environmental Education and Research (ACEER), near Iquitos, just south of the Equator.

My classes focused on tropical insect behavior and ecology. Ants, my favorite critters, could not be ignored. Admittedly, I was biased by a lifelong obsession with their intriguing societies. But ants were everywhere we looked since they dominate rainforests and perform vital natural roles as predators, soil builders and plant pruners.
Workshop participants always wanted to learn more about these giants, and were often truly inquisitive but partially motivated by self-preservation. Bullet ants dwell in lowland tropical rain forests throughout Central and South America.
They are relatively primitive ants because the queen is only slightly larger than her workers, thus little-specialized for egg laying, while mature colony populations are small and rarely contain more than a few thousand individuals. Bullet ants rear their brood in underground nests and climb trees to forage high in the energy-rich forest canopy. Successful foragers lay down chemical trails leading nest mates to food sources. Workers scamper nestward carrying insect prey or large nectar droplets held between their widely spread pinchers.
Fortunately, bullet ants are not aggressive except when protecting self or home. When their nest is disturbed, they swarm out, make an "eep-eep-eep" warning noise (stridulate), then quickly grab and impale intruders. Their alarm sounds eerily like the monstrous human-stalking ants in the now-classic science fiction movie "Them".