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Yellow Crazy Ant — printable fact sheet
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Yellow Crazy Ant
Anoplolepis gracilipes
The yellow crazy ant (Anoplolepis gracilipes) takes its name from its erratic, jerky, seemingly panicked walk, and it is one of the most destructive invasive species on Earth. It has no sting. Instead it sprays formic acid from the tip of the abdomen, and it uses this in overwhe…
Did you know?
- Yellow Crazy Ants have caused ecological disasters on some islands by killing millions of land crabs and altering forest ecosystems.
- Yellow crazy ants killed an estimated 10 to 20 million red land crabs on Christmas Island by spraying formic acid into their eyes, which changed the entire structure of the island's rainforest. They have no sting; the acid spray is their only weapon, and it works because there are so many of them. Their supercolonies contain multiple queens who do not fight, so the colony has no boundary and can cover hundreds of hectares. Their invasion was fuelled by farming introduced sap-sucking insects for honeydew, so conservationists now attack the ants indirectly by releasing a wasp that kills the scale insects.
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