my mother swears that when she was visiting my grandmother in florida (miami) recently, there was an incident where someone (bedridden, presumably old) was eaten alive by ants! she says this sort of thing happens every year. i think she’s lost it, so before i ask cecil, i thought i’d put the question out there. does this ever really happen?
There are, indeed, some very predatory varieties of ants in the world, mostly legionary ants (more informally called “army ants”) in the subfamilies Eciton and Dorylus. The latter are in Central Africa, so wouldn’t be an issue in Florida. Eciton, however, is a New World branch, found mostly in Central and South America (link).
As far as “eating someone alive,” I’m sure it’s possible, and there are ant-caused human fatalities on record. It’s very uncommon, though; most humans are quite capable of getting out of a column of driver ants (the other name for these critters) with only a few hundred painful bites. An immobilized person might be a different story, though I guarantee that if it happened it would be a high-profile news story. Gotta replace that shark story after it fizzled, don’tcha know.
(Trivia note: In some primitive African cultures, Dorylus ants are used to close wounds. A soldier ant is captured and its large jaws applied to the sides of the gash; after the ant pinches down, the body is cut off, leaving the head with jaws still clenched, holding the wound shut. Bigger cut? More ant heads. The point of this? If the ants were really as dangerous as the OP’s mother seems to think, those Africans would totally steer clear of them, and certainly wouldn’t use them for first aid.)
How would they know the woman was still alive when the ants started eating her?
You would have to be pretty much totally immobilized for ants, even driver or army ants, to actually kill you.
I agree with Cervaise, if such a thing had actually been documented, it would be playing 24/7 on Fox News.
I imagine there would be signs of a struggle: dismembered/squashed ants, a rolled up newspaper, etc.
For an elderly person with ADL limitations the sight of swarming army ants could be quite traumatic and lead to a panic attack, I’d imagine.
Three words: Weekly. World. News.
Somewhat correct. Nobody has been “Eaten Alive” but people have been attacked in their beds, leading to two fatalities. As far as I’ve been able to find there have been ten documented cases of INDOOR fire ant attacks. In four of the cases the patients didn’t suffer any complications, in one a five day old baby was attacked in it’s crib and went into a shock induced coma but survived. In another case a developmentally delayed two year old suffered damage to his cornea when the ants attacked his eyes. Finally, there were two cases where fire ants attacked elderly nursing home patients in bed, one died within six days of the attack and the other survived for another 13 months. I believe the nursing home attacks happened in Mississippi. Outdoor fire ant attacks have killed at least 80 people.
Yeah I saw this documentary once where these ants rampaged over a town, swarming and eating people alive by the dozens!
I think it was called Phase IV.
I believe there was a movie in the 70s about man-eating ants. This may have contributed to the notion. I think the move was called “Matabunda!!” Gave me nightmares for weeks.
How were they killed? Were they allergic?
you know, i really should have googled for this answer, but i was really looking for an excuse to post to the SDMB. try searching “florida ant attack nursing home” w/o quotes, natch. result #1?
[abcnews.go.com/sections/science/ DailyNews/ants000526.html](http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/ DailyNews/ants000526.html )
well thanks for posting anyway but now i feel dumb for not finding the info for myself in the first place.
i think they mostly had pre existing conditions (heart disease, immune system weaknesses, etc.) also i think they were mostly really old or really young.
You are remembering one of my favorite cheesy movies of all time, The Naked Jungle (1954), starring Charlton Heston as a South American plantation owner defending his property against the fearsome Marabunda ants, swarming in a column two miles wide and twenty miles long! They are sort of like a cross between army ants and leafcutters, since they devour not only animals and humans but all plant matter in their path. Neadless to say, they are entirely mythical. (My favorite scene is when they eat Heston’s foreman alive after he has carelessly fallen asleep while on sentinel duty. AIIIIIIII! AIIIIIIII! AIIIIIIII!)
[pouts]
Another favorite cheesy movie spoiled forever by the Voice of Clear Reason…
I worked on a exhibition on Tropical Forests once. As part of the exhibit, we had a video on images of the rainforest from movies and TV (Indiana Jones, King Solomon’s Mine, Tarzan, etc.) It of course included a clip of Screaming Guy Being Eaten Alive By Ants.
For the record, the 1954 Charlton Heston movie The Naked Jungle (which is pretty fun, in a cheesy way, even if all the closeups of swarming bugs are obviously showing common carpenter ants and the like) is based on a short story written by Carl Stephenson and published in Esquire Magazine in 1938 called “Leiningen vs. the Ants.” It can be read online here. Not very realistic, but a good read, especially the climactic battle. The story has also been adapted for radio twice; the script for the 1949 version can be found here, while the 1957 radioplay, starring William Conrad, can be downloaded as an MP3 here.
Thanks, Cervaise! I had heard of “Leiningen vs. the Ants” but never read it.
A rough calculation, based on the number of army ants in a swarm here in Panama, indicates that Leiningen had to deal with approximately 100 billion ants.
You’re right about that movie, Colibri. I also had read the story mentioned by Cervaise. Too bad nobody ever told me it was a myth!!
Now that I think about it, I recall reading a book around 1980 called “Strange But True: 99 Amazing Facts” ( :rolleyes: ). As I recall, the book claimed that certain villages in the tropics would be attacked now and then by ants. The villagers would flee, and return a few days later to find their homes entirely cleaned of vermin.
Here in Panama, when I’ve lived in houses at the edge of the forest we would occasionally be invaded by an army ant swarm. They are not necessarily unwelcome, since the swarm usually takes only a few hours to pass through and afterwards all of your cockroaches are gone. This is even more of a consideration in the typical back-country house with a thatched roof. They can be a big nuisance if they decide to bivouac overnight in the house, though.
The business about villagers leaving for “several days,” however, seems like an exaggeration to me. In Africa, driver ants have somewhat bigger swarms than army ants do in the New World, but I don’t think that it would normally take them days to pass on.