Well, nature is cruel so I am not supprised. Ever seen orcas sling seels 20 meters upp inm the air? It's not just nature, but it's dang horrendus to think about.
How amazing of an architect do you have to be to make a slope that is stable until an ant’s body weight is applied? That’s downright incredible that a trap like that can be dug.
the walls of the pit are made steep enough so that anything slightly scraping it will make the sand unstable and fall (aka the angle of repose) so the ant loses its footing. this is why antlions use sand
Not true they can climb almost anything. However if that surface is unstable they can not which is why they travel in groups to help each other out. No ant can do what a ant colony can. They're stronger in numbers@joshuaneate358
Now when you're feeling sorry for yourself, and downhearted, take comfort and good cheer in the fact that Antlions.....are not the size of African Lions 😲😲😲
Well I mean, I’m pretty sure humans would be smart enough to if they saw a giant sloped hole in the ground, they’d know it’s an antlion and to steer clear
@@flargarbason1740 yeah but if ever antlions became as big as regular lions we can deal with them with our guns tanks artillery and planes (Wait antlions slope hole will cause tanks to get stuck in a place from where it will be almost impossible to get them out)
When I was young, I used to find ants and drop them on the edge to watch them slide to their doom. What the narrator misses is that the Ant Lion isn't thrashing about. Its actually tossing sand up to the top of the ledge to cause a mini rock slide to drag the ant to the bottom. They don't "toy" with their food. They actually have really poor eyesight so most of its attacks are based on the vibrations it feels from the struggling ant. This whole event usually happens in a fraction of a second. They must have tried dozens of times to find an example this active. Still cool to watch in slow mo though. Oh yeah and dont step on these lil traps... They work humans too and they hurt like the Dicken. Lol
@@CookiesAndSharks I’d imagine any bug can hurt us a little from mosquito to ants. But I doubt an ant lion can bite through a shoe or would mess with a predator 10x their size
The narrator likely knows they're not intelligent enough to care about toying with their food, he just says is to improve the entertainment of the show.
My dad used to show me ant lions as a kid, then we’d go hunt for ants to feed them. 20+ years later I happen to find one today and show my wife for her first time. The excitement never goes away finding one, searching for food, and delivering to the terrifying little guys 😁
XD I remember the first time I saw an antlion... it fascinated me so much that I couldn't be bothered by the schools bell ringing everybody back in. I remember thinking to myself if the antlion actually knew that it built a trap for ants and that all it's prey were unfortunate insects, who will become it's food... or it just learned that digging hole= mealtime
Born and raised in Texas. Houston to be precise so in the city and I had honestly never realized how many bugs I had never taken notice of. About a year and a half ago we moved to Kingsville TX and it being more rural I have seen so many bugs that I had never seen before in my life. I have a stroller for my blind kitty and recently I started noticing these small 'holes'/cones in the dirt in this patch that we pass by on our daily walk. The area is teeming with ants I assumed it was them doing it but I had to look it up. Had never heard of Antlions. This video was fascinating.
im in houston, and i hadnt seen them since i was a kid in a suburb outside the city. the other day i noticed some ant lion lookin cones in the runoff sand from garden beds in my driveway....i plucked a hair and tested it- sure enough ant lion flipped up to grab what he thought was dinner. i didnt know until recently they are juvenile dragonflies
As kids growing up on a ranch, the fine sandy washes were prime ant lion habitat. I spent many, many hours collecting ants and small beetles to drop one by one into the perfect cone shaped lairs then watching them struggle to climb the steep, fine sand walls only to eventually slide into the big jaws of the ant lion. It would then pull its prey beneath the surface and, over time, toss the drained and dried out carcass out of the pit and wait for more. Was so fascinating. It beat burning them all with a magnifying glass.
it works much the same unless the ant or ants are big enough or numerous enough to resist the attack, i’m not sure how common this is but i think it depends on whether or not the ants dig down to the ant lion and kill it, or escape.
“You will therefore be taken to the Dune Sea and cast into the Pit of Carkoon, the nesting place of the all-powerful Sarlacc. In his belly, you will find a new definition of pain and suffering, as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.”
As a kid, I used to come across these things at my grandpa's farm. I'd purposely collect a couple ants and toss them into the pit just to watch them get sucked under. As someone who's always been interested in mysterious mechanics (including biological goings on), I was fascinated by this...
Clever! I'll have to try that way of catching them. I'd usually just scoop up a lot of dirt around the pit with my hands then gradually sift through the dirt to find them.
as a kid in Texas, I was fascinated by the way that pair of pincers on the ant lion’s rear end reached up through the sandy crater and pulled it under.
IIRC, John Cena raised money for charities and other good works. Seems like a silly way to make a living, but props from me. And he makes far more money than I, so who am I to criticize.
Whenever I’m in the south and find ant lion pits I make it my mission to feed it as many ants as I can. It’s not the most clever way that any animal catches its prey, but it’s just so novel
Actually I’d say it’s genius, the fact an insect has the architectural insight to build a slope of sand on the perfect angle that an ants body weight will cause the sand to fall to the centre is frighteningly clever. Even if it isn’t really “thinking” about doing about building it like that the fact that it does is amazing
You know, I have an antlion, but mine just grab then throws the little bugger up to the top and the ant just runs away, and I watch the ant, and it never came back nor came near the pit lol
