As the ants streamed back to their nest, this worker carried a stone, several times its body weight, in a vice-like grip. Ripan noticed a few other ants with equally surprising cargo: a scrap of orange peel and a scale from a snake’s skin. The colony’s smaller workers, meanwhile, would have been looking after the larvae in the nest.
Most objects transported by ants are prey items: insects, arachnids and even larger animals. Yet some ant species are known to take dried tree sap back to their nests, using it as an antiseptic to control the spread of disease in their colonies. Others place objects near their nests that act as sun traps to radiate warmth.
India
Ripan has been inspired by nature since childhood, enthralled by everything from the life and death of a grasshopper and the flashing green hue of a bee-eater to the sound of crushing dry leaves on the forest floor. His work focuses on insect macro photography and his photos have been published in magazines, including Sanctuary Asia and BBC Wildlife Magazine. Ripan has also received many national and international awards in wildlife photography competitions.
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