Army ants, groups of ants that sweep along in massive, voracious groups, evolved just once -- contrary to common scientific belief -- a Cornell University researcher reports. Entomologist Sean Brady studied the DNA of 30 army ant species from across the world and concluded that they all had the same point of origin.

Brady's findings, scheduled for next week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, were being released early, the academy said Tuesday.

View: Full Article | Source: CNN

I watched a Discovery Channel thing on them last month. They are so perfect at what they do, they dont need to evolve. They just ravage the landscape eating everything. They build bridges using there own bodies.... it was truly great. The problem for people is that they do eat EVERYTHING. On that show, some guy had fallen asleep and the ants were trying to eat him. They also showed, in fast forward, how they can eat an entire animal in a matter of hours. I think it was some kind of fox or somethiing like that. It was dead of course. nice find on that article SaRuMaN!

CASTOR

Army Ants are cool


...at a distance, I mean

Although I despise any insect that is not either a butterfly or a bumblebee, I have to say that lots of insect species are very admirable. They have singularity of purpose, an amazing strength to size ratio, can be exceptionally beautiful (or incredibly ugly) and never seem to trample on one another to get to where they're going (unless they're army ants and are using their mates as a bridge... lol).

That said, they give me the heebie jeebies....