Ants Fighting

Dear Ant Consult-Ant

I have an ant question!

Subject: Ant activity


Dear Dave,

Clusters of ants acting in an excited manner do often indicate swarming. As you noticed, however, you would expect to see winged queens and males mingled among the workers. Instead, from what you describe, it sounds like you witnessed a a fight between two nearby colonies of ants.

When ants fight each other, they tend to latch onto antennae and legs and pull hard, thus creating the X’s you describe.

Above three ants from one colony pull on a single ant from another colony.

More ants join in, and it becomes a tug of war.

Sometimes one species of ant attacks another, such as these weaver ants attacking a much smaller species.

(Photo from Wikimedia) This one looks more like a Y than a X.

They may use the same behavior with prey.

(Photo from Wikimedia)

Ants may fight other ants to gain access to food, to defend their nest from hostile take over, or to defend the area around their nest (territory).

Some ants are more likely to fight than others. In Mark Moffett’s Book Adventures Among Ants, he has a chapter devoted to the territorial disputes between two huge colonies of Argentine ants in California. Along the front line literally millions of ants die every month in what is a never-ending struggle.

On the other hand, a dispute between honeypot ants may be resolved by mere posturing, no actual fighting may occur.

Sounds like you witnessed an interesting event, which left an impression on you. Without knowing the species involved, etc., I hesitate to speculate further as what was happening.

Thank you for sharing this question. Let me know if you make any more interesting observations.

-The Consult-Ant


13 Replies to “Ants Fighting”

  1. I have two large species of ants that live in my trees, one is black the other is red 3/8 in long, i have been catching a palr of them and putting in a small babyfood jar and watching them,the red one wants no part of the black. The black wins the battle. He just sits in the bottom and when red tires and falls on him enough the black one mortally wounds him. There are several types of ants here I think argentenia and a small black one that holds his rear end upward all the time,they are very agressive and will grab other ants by the legs . Tennessee is my location,If I seem cruel,sorry

  2. I witnessed the same thing today. What I thought was ants swarming a food source was in fact a battle of mass proportions. I stared at the mass wondering what they were eating but I could not identify the food source. I brushed a mass of seemingly stationary ants to see what was going on. As I focused in again the scattered ants returned, and each found a pair to lock jaws with. At first I thought it was some kind of mass orgy, though this seemed to contradict what I knew about ant mating behavior. Then, spotting a victorious ant carrying the carcass of it’s foe, I realized they were eating EACH OTHER. It was a mass cannibalistic extermination. Some ants joined their brethren in a kill, most dueled mono y mono. Thousands of ants, of apparently the same breed, turned my driveway into a killing field that only nature in it’s cold, cruel manner could corporealize.

  3. Sir,
    I have witnessed an Ant fight, actually this is the third within a month. It happened twice in two days. I am fromKerala, India.
    The ants I witnessed fighting each other is Red ones commonly seen in mango trees here. They fight violently with each other, rip the others hands and legs to death. After the fight the area will be full of ant dead bodies, and the most important thing is within minutes the fight get over, other ants clean up the whole dead bodies leaving only legs behind.
    Is this realy a territorial dispute?
    I mean this is happening repeatedly?
    I have taken videos and photos.
    Please clarify.

    Sumeh Somanathan

  4. Hi,
    Today I was walking in a pueblo here in Spain and I saw two ants (large,black) fighting viciously. My friend tried to separate them in a call for “peace” with a leave but he could not separate them, they were locked together. Then we started to notice more and more pairs of ants fighting each other. Did we witness an ant war? They looked to be of the same ants..large and black, but I don’t know. I have a video of that would help.


  5. Ari,

    Yes, worker ants do get into conflicts or “wars.” That was very likely what you saw. Sometimes two colonies of the same kind of ant will fight over territory.

  6. Ok I witnessed one ant battle that went from two small groups of ants that led into big swarms in minutes at my grandparents. I went outside to go relax (and my grandparents had a lot of ant beds at their house) and explored the yard when I noticed that there were small bits of peanut butter sandwiches left (from one of my cousins throwing down pieces) and i went to go grab the pieces and trash them but I stopped when I saw a small group of Argentine ants (I think about 12 at first) leaving the area, carrying bits of bread and peanut butter with them, when another group of ants started to arrive (5 to start with) and they were black and a bit smaller than the Argentine ants (my grandmother called them sugar ants). I saw one of the Argentine ants drop their food particle and went towards the sugar ants and attacked one of them. The rest of the Argentine ants followed in and attacked as well and killed all of them. From my previous observing, the Argentine ants never bothered attacking the sugar ants no matter what, but this completely took me by surprise. I went inside to get a drink and I came back out and went over to where I watched a small massacre and I was now seeing about 20 sugar ants fighting the 12 ants. Since this was near the Argentine ants’ nest, I saw a swarm of Argentine ants coming out and heading to the fight (i couldn’t count them all cause they were grouped in tight). I then started seeing a stream of sugar ants heading into the fight and when I looked closer, any sugar ant fighting solo against an Argentine ant is pinched to death and I would at times see an Argentine ant get torn apart by sugar ants. I went to go throw away my empty bottle and I went inside to snack on something before I went back out to watch the rest of the battle. I went back out watch the fight and I saw nothing but dead carcasses of ants (both sides) and the battlefield was swarmed with sugar ants with more coming in. There were hardly any Argentine ants left standing and those that survived hauled what little food was grabbed before the battle and returned to their nest. I honestly don’t think those sugar ants were sugar ants but nevertheless I thought it was cool even though I watched half of it. Just figured I would share this story.

  7. Thank you for sharing the story. Sorry for the delay. My computer hasn’t been sending me notifications about comments for about a month and I didn’t realize it.

  8. I constantly see sugar ants and pavement ants living very close to each other here in Colorado and they never fight each other that I see. Why is that?

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