termite-army.AVI

Termite attack! Nah, just kidding....But they do look like army ants.....
A large termite column marching along a culvert. These termites are nasute termites which means the soldiers have nozzles on their heads which emit a chemical repellent that wards of predators like ants.
The workers march in the middle and the soldiers guard the sides. These termites are on their way to their feeding grounds; their diet is mostly made up of lichen.
You can see the column backing up now and again; this happens when something further down impeded their procession. Something like a traffic jam....
I think there's probably a few hundred thousand termites here, because the column was stretching dozens of meters long and there seemed no end in sight to this endless procession.
www.termiteweb.com

[@memesindustry6691]

Really satisfying to watch

[@Ficusfigo]

Well, I have never seen any ants that were interested in eating them, so I figure that this is a learned evolutionary behavior. Like some caterpillars may be obnoxious to birds, and the birds learn to leave them alone.
I believe the chemicals are discharged through some muscle contraction, and it depends on the species, but it's mostly just a repellent, not really fatal for ants. But again, it depends on the species. ALL ants that bump into these nasute termites simply move along.

[@ItaTermite]

Yes, they "fire" through muscular contractios... as far as i know they use the same muscles mandibulated soldiers would use to move their mandibles! Regarding the toxicity of nasute termite secretions experiments with genera like Tenuirostritermes and Nasutitermes have shown that they are indeed toxic to ants (beside being strongly irritant and repellent), and when ants come under heavy fire (the meaning of which depend on the size of the ants in question as these termites are alway tiny) they usually die, though rather slowly. But as you said the chemical composition of nasute secretions can very widely among species and has been not investigated in the vast majority of them. I think ant fatalities would be difficult to observe under natural conditions with these Hospitalitermes because as you said ants avoid them, and even a if a large ant would be a little too insistent and get an hit that would be sufficent to make her quickly fall back way before getting a lethal dose. Experiments in captivity with Nasutitermes costalis and several ant genera have confirmed such patterns for large ponerines, who unlike small termite-sized ants (genera tested were Solenopsis, Pheidole, Anoplolepis and a pair more) rarely died (doing so only when heavily sprayed) but still never managed to break through the termite defence, retreating when hit or simply avoding them. Nex time i have Hospitalitermes available i will surely make some experiments with different ant genera and "dosages".

[@ItaTermite]

And congratulations for your site, it's always great to see some nice termite pics!

[@Ficusfigo]

As for eating their own, termites and ants do that quite frequently. Even though termites are 90% vegetarian :)

[@MrInsaneCranium]

Such beauty..

[@paldesic2009]

Hahahah alot like the Disney film Antz when the Termites charge