Predatory Insects

Insects have many enemies, but the most deadly are often other insects. Some chase their prey in the open, while others use stealth, taking their victims by surprise. Some do not feed until their prey is dead, but praying mantises start straight away, while their meal is still struggling to escape. Predatory insects eat a huge range of small animals, including other insects, spiders, mites, fish, and frogs. Some of these are troublesome pests, so predatory insects can help to keep them under control.

HUNTING IN A PACK
When predators hunt together, they can attack prey much larger than themselves. These army ants are doing just that, as they swarm over a caterpillar. Army ants live in tropical forests, and pour over the ground like a wolf pack, overpowering anything that is too slow to get away. A single army can contain more than a million ants, advancing in a column up to 15 m (49 ft) wide. The ants have tiny eyes, so they find their prey by touch.

AMBUSHED!
For a praying mantis, a fly makes a tasty meal. Using her superb eyesight, this female mantis spots a fly, and then makes a lightning-fast attack. As she lunges forwards, her front legs open straight and then snap shut, pinning the fly between two rows of sharp spines. With the insect imprisoned, the mantis starts to feed. Male mantises are smaller than the females. When mantises mate, the female sometimes dines on her partner, starting with his head.

WASP STING
To make a kill, predatory insects have to overpower their victims. Many use their legs or mouthparts to grab their prey, but wasps often follow this up with a deadly sting. The sting slides out of the wasp’s abdomen, and a muscular pouch pumps venom through the sting and into the victim’s body. Unlike wasps, bees are not predatory. Their stings often have barbed tips, but they use them only in self-defence.

LIVING LARDERS
Some insects hunt on behalf of their young. This wasp has caught a spider, and has paralysed it with her sting. She will drag the spider back to an underground nest, where it will be a living food store for one of her grubs. There are many species of hunting wasps, and they specialize in different types of prey, from caterpillars to tarantulas. Only the females hunt – the males usually feed at flowers.