The Daily Omnivore

The army ant genus Dorylus, also known as driver ants, safari ants, or siafu, is found primarily in central and east Africa, although the range also extends to tropical Asia. The term siafu is a loanword from Swahili. All Dorylus species are blind, though they, like most varieties of ants, communicate primarily through pheromones. As with their New World counterparts, there is a soldier class among the workers, which is larger, with a very large head and pincer-like mandibles. They are capable of stinging, but very rarely do so, relying instead on their powerful shearing jaws.

Such is the strength of the ant’s jaws, in East Africa they are used as natural, emergency sutures. Various East African indigenous tribal peoples (e.g. Maasai moran), when they suffer a gash in the bush, will use the soldiers to stitch the wound by getting the ants to bite on both sides of the gash, then breaking off the body. This seal can hold for days at a time, and if necessary, the procedure repeated – allowing sufficient time for natural healing to commence.

read more »

Bats of the genus Pteropus are the largest bats in the world. On average, P. vampyrus is the largest species, with a wingspan of up to 6 feet (1.83 meters). They are commonly known Flying Foxes. They live in the tropics and subtropics of Asia, Australia, Indonesia, islands off East Africa, and a number of remote oceanic islands in both the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

Characteristically, all species of flying foxes only feed on nectar, blossom, pollen, and fruit, which explains their limited tropical distribution. They do not possess echolocation, a feature which helps the other sub-order of bats, the Microbats, locate and catch prey such as insects in mid-air. Instead, smell and eyesight are very well-developed in flying foxes.

Hallucigenia [huh-loo-suh-jane-ee-uh] is an extinct genus of animal found in British Columbia, Canada. The genus name was coined by English paleontologist, Simon Conway Morris in 1979. He named the genus Hallucigenia, because of its ‘bizarre and dream-like quality’ (like a hallucination).

Hallucigenia was initially considered by Stephen Jay Gould to be unrelated to any living species, but most palaeontologists now believe that the species was a relative of modern arthropods.