Consider the Antlion
The life and times of a bug that eats ants for breakfast, has appeared in both Star Trek and Star Wars films, and lives most of its life without the benefit of an anus.
Antlions are a murderous little bunch. They also have a bit more going on than you might suspect. A group comprised of many species of predatory insects in the family Myrmeleontidae, antlions are the critters who dig those little conical pits that you may have noticed underfoot, in places where the ground is sandy or dusty.
There may be dozens of traps dug within a few square feet, and at the bottom of every pit lurks an antlion. How did they get there? What do they want? And why do they wait their whole lives to take one gigantic poop? We’ll get to that in a moment, but first, some antlion basics.
Growing Up Ugly
The antlion begins life, as do so many insects, as an egg laid by the mama antlion. This group undergoes “complete metamorphosis,” meaning there are four basic life stages: egg, larva, pupa (or cocoon), and adult. This is the same process that produces a butterfly. But the antlion is no sweet little butterfly.
It’s true that the final stage of the antlion’s development has its appeal. The fragile, fluttering adult can sometimes be found around lights at night, although very few people see them or know what they are. And antlion cocoons are soft, silky and round. It’s the larva that makes those cocoons and turns into the adult that we need to talk about (and when we say “antlion,” we’re almost always referring to the larval stage).
Antlion larvae are highly aggressive predators who ambush and devour just about any insect they can get their mandibles on. Many species of antlion just stand around in the shadows until another bug walks by, at which point they grab them and gobble them up, like a troll under a bridge. Many others, however, make that special pitfall trap to snare other bugs.
The process by which an antlion makes its trap has a few surprises. Here’s how it’s done:
Step 1: The antlion wanders around until it finds a good place to dig its trap. As it walks — waddles, really — it leaves behind characteristic rambling, squiggly tracks in the sand. At some point in time, someone thought that these tracks looked like someone doodling in the sand; this is why another common name for the antlion is “doodlebug.” That’s right, that adorable little doodlebug on your kid’s backpack is actually an ugly, pitiless predator. So it goes.
Step 2: Once it finds a good spot, the antlion starts digging. If you have ever had to dig a hole many times bigger than your own body in dry sand with your bare hands (and who hasn’t?), you know that it’s not easy. The antlion gets it done WITH ONE HAND. It has devised a pretty cool work flow, too: it digs in a spiral, using one hand or claw to scoop dry sand onto the back of its wide, flat head; it then flips/head-butts the load of sand completely out of the hole. It works fast, too.
Step 3: Once it has the pit dug to its liking, the bug squirms backwards into the bottom. It’s a chubby little beast, but its head is flat and camouflaged. It squirms all the way ass-backward into the pit until the only thing sticking out are the insect’s huge, venomous, sickle-shaped jaws.
Have I not mentioned the jaws? Have a look:
Step 4: An ant or similarly unlucky insect walks by and tumbles into the pit of dry sand. The walls give way as it frantically tries to scramble out, so all that its desperate clawing accomplishes is to bring it closer and closer to the center of the pit, where the gaping jaws of the antlion are waiting. Things get worse as the antlion begins flinging loose sand at its struggling prey, further collapsing the walls and making escape virtually impossible. The victim is doomed.
UNLESS…
Step 4A: The victim is not actually a victim at all. It might be one of several antlion parasites that attack the hungry bug when it least expects it. One kind of parasitic wasp (technically a parasitoid, since a parasite does not actually kill its victim) intentionally allows itself to be caught by the antlion. Things look bad for the wasp, but right before it’s about to get eaten up, it pulls a slick pro-wrestling maneuver and hops onto the antlion’s back. There it lays its eggs where the antlion can’t reach them. The baby wasp grubs hatch out and burrow into the antlion’s body and eat him alive from the inside out. If you’re an ant, you probably have some karmic thoughts about this.
Step 5: Assuming it’s not dealing with a sneaky parasite, the antlion grabs its prey and punctures its body with those ridiculous gigantic fangs. Venom flows from channels in each pincer, and the insect is immobilized in seconds. The antlion, like a spider, uses its fangs to suck out the poisoned, liquified insides of the insect, and then gives the deceased’s mortal remains a header over the edge of the pit. The little monster scoots its chubby butt backwards into the pit and begins the wait for its next meal. Here’s a video, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
Antlions are Full of It
Speaking of the antlion’s butt — it’s a butt sans anus. Remember, when the insect sets itself up inside its pit trap, it backs in and anchors itself rear-first. It has stiff, forward-pointing hairs on the lower parts of its body that keep it from being pulled out during battles with larger prey, so getting out of the pit to poop would be a real hassle. The solution: Don’t poop. Ever.
Since it doesn’t poop, an antlion has no use for an anus, so it doesn’t even have one. Its solid waste products are simply stored up in the rear chambers of its body, and when it undergoes pupation, they are all released at once via a valve at the rear of the pupa. Yes, it waits its whole life to take one gigantic poop. Just imagine what a moment that must be for the antlion!
Antlion Culture
For such a gross little jerk, antlions are surprisingly present in popular culture. The impressive website antlionpit.com has helpfully compiled the many antlion appearances on the big and small screen:
1. Antlions are all over video games: SimAnt, the Final Fantasy series, Terraria, Hunt Down the Freeman, Monster Rancher 2, Mother 3, and the Half-Life 2 video game series apparently all include antlion-ish characters, according to https://www.antlionpit.com/popculture.html
2. If you’re a Pokemon-minded individual, you may perceive that the Trapinch, Vibrava, and Flygon Pokémon evolution line is based on the antlion.
3. Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan included a scene that I personally could not watch in which big groty things called “Ceti eels” were inserted into someone’s ear in order to control their mind. But those aren’t eels — those are antlions! Kind of. They definitely look like one.
4. Star Wars fans will immediately recognize the Sarlacc, a monster from Episode VI — Return of the Jedi, as a kind of giant antlion. It lives in a sand hole called “The Great Pit of Carkoon” and eats anything it can grab. That definitely sounds familiar.
5. The monster in the film Enemy Mine, starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gosset Jr., is very antlionesque. It looks similar, and its habits and pit-trap technique are identical. Also, like antlions, the monster spits the remains of its meal out its hole.
6. My favorite antlion-related film is Tremors, the 1990 monster/comedy movie starring Kevin Bacon and the always-hilarious Fred Ward. The Tremors beast lives in the ground, responds to vibrations, bursts through the sand to grab victims with huge jaws, and basically is just a big tub of guts with a mouth on one end and no discernible anus. The similarities, like the antlion itself, are inescapable.
There’s more that could be said about antlions, but none of it is any less violent or nasty. We will stop here with a quick reminder, to both ants and humans, to please watch your step. Antlions are waiting.
