Giant Forest Ant

Description:

Camponotus gigas is the largest ant species in existence. This soldier giant forest ant is about 3cm in length. This individual is isolated from it's colony and made itself a target to tiny parasitic flying insects. These photographs show it trying desperately to get rid of a couple of flying parasitic wasps or Phoridae flies by using it's front pair of legs to brush it's head to prevent them from landing on it's head.

Habitat:

Forest floor of Southeast Asia where they thrive successfully.

Notes:

Both the flies and the ant were not giving up so the battle will be going for quite a while until eventually one of them wins. I have watched documentary programs that mentioned about Phoridae flies that always successfully decapitate their ant victims. By the way, I have started to continue adding my spottings from Maliau Basin. The technical problem that caused me to loose access to my Maliau Basin photographs has finally been solved. >>>Map accuracy : 5km diameter.