Ant getting trapped in an Antlion sand trap
I took this video at my in laws house in Kannur, Kerala on 23rd March 2020. This was the lockdown period imposed during the coronavirus pandemic outbreak. The Antiloon larva is a voracious predator. Within a few minutes of seizing its prey with its jaws and injecting it with venom and enzymes, it begins to suck out the digestion products.The larva is extremely sensitive to ground vibrations, the low-frequency sounds made by an insect crawling across the ground; the larva locates the source of the vibrations by the differences in timing of the arrival of waves detected by receptors, tufts of hairs on the sides of the two hindmost thoracic segments. In this video I placed an ant into the sand trap and capture the moments thereafter.
I took this video at my in laws house in Kannur, Kerala on 23rd March 2020. This was the lockdown period imposed during the coronavirus pandemic outbreak. The Antiloon larva is a voracious predator. Within a few minutes of seizing its prey with its jaws and injecting it with venom and enzymes, it begins to suck out the digestion products.The larva is extremely sensitive to ground vibrations, the low-frequency sounds made by an insect crawling across the ground; the larva locates the source of the vibrations by the differences in timing of the arrival of waves detected by receptors, tufts of hairs on the sides of the two hindmost thoracic segments. In this video I placed an ant into the sand trap and capture the moments thereafter.