Odontomachus bauri with a young cricket it has caught. La Selva, Heredia, Costa Rica - Alex Wild Photography - Insect Images

Odontomachus

is a large, conspicuous ponerine ant found in the tropics and subtropics worldwide. Often called "trap-jaw ants", these predatory insects are noted for their unusual mandibles that are held open at 180º and snap shut on a hair trigger.

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alexwild > Odontomachus assiniensis

St. Lucia, KZN, South Africa

alexwild > Odontomachus assiniensis. The odd, alien-shaped head of a trap-jaw ant serves to house the set of muscles and latches that operate the ant's mandibular trap.

St. Lucia, KZN, South Africa

alexwild > Odontomachus bauri with a young cricket it has caught.

La Selva, Heredia, Costa Rica

alexwild > Odontomachus bauri. Millisecnds ahead of a mandible strike, a tropical trap-jaw ant closes in on its cricket prey.

La Selva, Heredia, Costa Rica

alexwild > Odontomachus bauri

La Selva, Heredia, Costa Rica

alexwild > Odontomachus bauri. Trap-jaw ants are normally thought of as predators, but they also tend honeydew-producing insects.

Gamboa, Panama

alexwild > Odontomachus bauri. With peak velocities over 50 meters per second, the mandibles of this species have among the fastest recorded movements in the biological world

La Selva, Heredia, Costa Rica

Odontomachus bauri with a young cricket it has caught.

La Selva, Heredia, Costa Rica

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