They sew with their babies
The grubs make silk. Workers hold a grub in their jaws and pass it back and forth like a tube of glue to join the leaves.
The Borneo rainforest · Bees, wasps and ants
Weaver ants
Oecophylla smaragdina
Long-legged, orange-red ants that live in trees, in nests made of living leaves sewn together.
- Size
- Workers 5 to 10mm
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Trees in forests, orchards and gardens across tropical Asia and northern Australia
March after you in a line. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Weaver ants
Good to know
Six things about the weaver ants
Living chains
To pull two leaves together, the ants grip each other waist to jaw and form chains across the gap.
Many nests, one family
A single colony can have more than a hundred nests spread over several trees, and half a million ants.
The oldest pest control
Chinese orange growers were using weaver ants to protect their fruit about 1,700 years ago.
A bite with a squirt
They bite, then squirt acid into the wound. It stings, but does no lasting harm.
People eat them
The ants and their grubs are eaten in Thailand and elsewhere. They taste sharp and lemony.
The real thing
Photos of the weaver ants
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Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Look up into mango, citrus and other broad-leaved trees for balls of leaves bound with white silk, and ants running along the branches.
How to help
They are a gardener's friend: a tree with weaver ants has far fewer pests. Just do not lean on it.
Keep going
More from The Borneo rainforest
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