Fire ants

Fire ants are a colonial species of virid crustacean, native to the hot and dry equatorial regions, particulary in central Ororr and western Otekahré. They are considered a pest due to their habit of swarming over anything considered a threat to the nest or a food source, inflicting a mass of painful bites with their powerful jaws. Though the ants have no venom, crushing the ants by rolling on the ground or trying to brush them off releases a caustic fluid which is a painful irritant to human skin. The burning pain and resultant scarring is the origin of their name.

They are also known as the source of blood honey, a sweet red liquid prized by nomadic people and used to sweeten cakes and drinks.

Fire ants make nest mounds in dry hummocks, in the roots of dead trees, and occasionally in poorly-maintained houses. Only their pupae are capable of digesting whole food, the ants themselves being strong but lacking a complex digestive system. Therefore any food, usually decomposing organic matter, is taken back to the nest for consumption by the pupae. These in turn lay egg-like spheres containing a red liquid rich in sugars and nutrients. These are consumed by the ants as food.

Pupae eventually grow and hatch into fully-formed ants - the less they are fed, the quicker they mature, since if the colony is lacking food, more ants are required to look for it. Nests vary in their social organisation, with some only having one egg-laying queen, others having multiple queens or sub-queens who lay eggs.

If a nest is destroyed, one or more ants will turn into queens and cannibalise fellow ants to lay new pupae.