Picture yourself in your tent in the beautiful Mara
Triangle, going to bed for the night after a long day’s work. It’s a cool
night, with a nice breeze coming in through the screened windows, and in the
distance you can hear calls from various animals, lulling you to sleep.
Sometime in the middle of the night you’re woken up by a
light rain on the tarp above you, but you quickly start to drift back to sleep.
Except…there’s something biting you. They’re crawling all over you, maybe the
sound on your tarp isn’t rain? You fumble for your head lamp to see what’s
going on, all the while trying to brush off whatever it is that’s on you, and
as the light goes on your stomach drops; there are thousands of Siafu crawling
all over you and your tent. You take the only way out you can think of, you run
for the door.
Siafu is the Swahili word for ant, however it commonly
refers to a specific type of ant known as the Safari Ant or the Driver Ant.
 |
| Safari Ants - Photo by: Eli Strauss |
|
 |
| Safari Ants Swarming - Photo by: Eli Strauss |
|
|
And here's a short clip of the ants in action, taken by Eli Strauss: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPK5lGIdOeg (much cooler in HD)
These ants are found primarily in East Africa, and are fairly easy to distinguish
from other ants. They are normally seen traveling in large lines about 20 ants
wide, with the smaller ants in the middle and the larger “warriors” on the
outside. Although all of these ants have pincers and are quite capable of
attacking for food or when they feel threatened, the warriors are significantly
larger with much stronger pincers as well as a stinger. In their lines, they’re
fairly easy to avoid; such a large number of army ants tends to catch one’s eye
from far enough away that you can simply step over the line. If you’re
unfortunate enough to come across a line in the dark, or while you have your
head in the clouds, however, and if you step in it, there’s not a whole lot you
can do but try to shake them off and hope you didn’t have any warriors crawl up
your leg. If you’ve seen this happen to somebody, you can really appreciate
where the expression “ants in your pants” comes from.
They aren’t always so easy to avoid. When they’ve been
scattered by something in their path, or when they find something to eat, they
begin to swarm (as they did in my tent on that lovely night). They’ll scatter
all over the place so that stepping over them is no longer an option. Luckily,
they’re not poisonous, they aren’t lethal and their bites are by no means excruciating.
So, looking back on the experience, I can’t help but laugh and feel fortunate.
As far as animal invasions in my tent at night go, it could have been a lot
worse than ants.
The setting was Ashlei’s last time on obs before she headed
back to the States. We were hoping
to see some of our hyenas and maybe some other large mammals, so Ashlei could
see them one last time. Our luck started
off pretty well when we spotted a couple of adult and sub-adult lions. We moved on quickly from
them because lions are just not as neat as hyenas. After driving less than a kilometer we came upon one of our
hyenas, Roosevelt. She was
meandering through a group of Thomson’s gazelles. We were about to move on when Roosevelt perked her head up
and eyed a baby gazelle. Within
seconds the chase had begun.
Posts
