African driver ant (Dorylus gribodoi) is the biggest ant in the world. This queen driver ant can grow up to nearly 5 cm long.
It is also known as Dorylus, Safari Ants or Saifu. Dorylus is a large genus of army ants which found in central and east Africa.
Fun Facts About Dorylus
- Each Dorylus colony can contain over 20 million individuals driver ant.
- During food supplies they leave the hill and form marching columns of up to 50,000,000 ants.
- Driver ants prey on larvae of the African sugarcane borer.
- Earthworms is the large part of diet of Dorylus.
- Their queens are even larger and the drones are larger than the soldiers
- After mating, the queen will lay up to 1,000,000 eggs per month.
- When East African tribe Maasai moran suffer from a gash in the bush, they use the soldiers to stitch the wound by getting the ants to bite on both sides of the gash
Scientific classification of Dorylus
- Kingdom:Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Hymenoptera
- Family: Formicidae
- Subfamily:Dorylinae
- Leach, 1815
- Tribe: Dorylini
- Leach, 1815
- Genus: Dorylus
- Fabricius, 1793
- Type species: Vespa helvola
- Diversity: 61 species
